A potential future for 3v3 and the "mobile" experience

Vainglory Archive 3v3
1

So i watched Quatervois played mobile legends bing bong at mystic rank (the highest rank in the game which took him 7 days to reach lel). Its queue times are insanely fast. 2 second queues. Thats faster than vainglory’s private match queue times. Games take around 10-15 mins to complete, which is short enough for players to play “on the go”, which is pretty much the mobile game experience in a nutshell. With its fast queue and loading times, bing bong players would only need 16 mins max to complete a whole game cycle, from queuing to loading to the actual game itself. Compared to vg, you need 5 mins to queue, 2 mins to load, and then the game takes 25 mins. Thats 32 mins for one cycle, which is too long for a mobile game. You could play 2 bing bong games in the same time as 1 vg game.

If you say “Just play brawl modes then” like what smec expects their players to do, brawl modes become your main representation of its mobile game and you know how bad brawl modes are. People say brawl modes shouldnt be treated seriously but its the only thing players can play that are short enough to be considered a mobile game. Bing bong is a bad game but its still miles better than vg brawl modes. From my personal experience over the 4 years of playing vg, i almost never played standard matches when im outside because it would take too long.

5v5 already fills up the 20-25 min game time, yet 3v3 is also a 20-25 min gamemode. 3v3 mode should instead be a 10-15 min gamemode, with faster gold and xp gains, and an entirely different item tree that makes 3v3 balanced. No BP, DE, SF, PS, and bring back the old defence items. Or just revert all the items in 3v3 back to update 2.10. 3v3 was balanced before, semc could easily balance it again if they put effort into it. Just adding double bans will already make 3v3 a lot better.

You know what else could also help a lot? Removing blitz and BR. Queue times are bad because of the low player base and the amount of split queues (2 brawl, 2 casual, 2 rank). Casual matchmaking is absolutely horrible because many casual players are playing brawl instead of standard casual. So imagine if all the brawl mode players moved to casual queue, with some going back to ranked. Queue times will be a lot better and the game wont feel like its dying when your queue times are longer than your match times. Oh wait, they screwed themselves over with talents and cant do anything to brawl modes. They could also combine both brawl modes into one seasonal gamemode. It would be more fun as it forces them to do something to brawl modes every season, but it wont be as effective in helping with queue times.

TLDR make the length of a 3v3 cycle the same as a bing bong by shortening the standard 3v3 mode to the length of BRs, and improve queue times as much as possible, best solution being delet brawl modes. So players will actually have time to play standard matches when they are gaming on the go instead of being only able to play brawl modes which are trash.

15 Likes
2

makes me remember how good blitz before talents… blitz b4 talents is what mobile player seeks…

and why not? makes 3v3 10-15 minute is nice…

3 Likes
3

Yah, I remember how much fun blitz was back then. Adding talents was a massive misstep, and the final nail in the mode’s coffin was making blitz a ranked mode.

People still play it, of course, but they’re not the kind of matches I find enjoyable at all.

2 Likes
4

I honestly wouldn’t like those items to be deleted (except SH) or the mode been made faster, it would seem more like a brawl mode than a normal one.

5

Long queue times at low elo are problemtic, long queue times at high elo should be accepeted, queue times in master and challenger are 20 minutes in league. The thing is queue times in league high elo are accepeted cause they’re there to make sure the matchmaker creates the most fair games possible. Plus in league when you find a game and get into draft you know the game is gonna be played, in Vainglory high elo you wait 7 minutes in queue to find a game only to wait another 7 minutes cause the game got dodged over and over again and eventually 25 minutes later you finally get into a game only to find out that you have tier 5s on your team. I am sure most people in high tiers would have no problem waiting 10 minutes for a game if they were guaranteed to be fair and not dodged.

1 Like
6

They could had just put the same MM in ranked 5v5 as in 3v3. In 3v3 ranked matches in high elo unless in full party are extremely accurate.

1 Like
7

3v3 needs 6 players, 5v5 needs 10. They are all using the same matchmaking system, just that 5v5 matchmaking needs a bigger playerbase for it to be as accurate as 3v3.

8

I completely agree with you.

Vainglory as a MOBA feels great to play and is visually stunning in-game (U.I. is another matter, but that’s a different topic).
But. It’s a MOBA on “mobile” devices.

The utmost and absolute flaw of Vainglory is the poor adjustments to it as a MOBA for mobile in my opinion.
It’s game time for its main modes is simply not suitable for something on mobile as people don’t have that much time if they’re already playing on mobile. Plus, VG demands a lot of the device’s battery too. Then you have several queues that dwindle the number of players in a queue overall.
Coupled with generally poor pings for the majority of the player base worldwide, it’s no wonder VG overtime becomes less favored as a “mobile game.”

I have lots of things I can say that I have grievances related to SEMC’s handling of VG, but no, that’ll be super salty and opinionated. Vainglory as a MOBA on mobile could be near perfect, but SEMC’s the problem in part because they did stuff to it that just degraded it in my eyes over the last two years.

At this point in this comment, I usually go on about my ideas for the “ideal Vainglory” in my opinion. But I won’t this time. If anything, I think writing down my ideas with great elaboration bores me to the idea and people generally don’t read my walls of text anyway.

So, in very simple sentences, here’s what my ideal vision of Vainglory is.

  1. Has only 5v5 as the main mode and nothing else.
  2. Has two maps for 5v5 - the same standard we have across all MOBAs (Sovereign’s Rise), and a new map that’s a rendition of the 3v3 map with two lanes and a big middle jungle.
  3. Maps are designed in such a way that “true mirroring” is possible. By that, I mean something like left side jungle is both Blue Orbs and vice versa for the Red Orb.
  4. One seasonal game mode (once every 3-month cycle) that uses or edits one of the maps.
  5. All game modes can end at 10 minutes or less, with 15 minutes being the maximum.
  6. 2 to 3 queues only, following the above suggestions.
  7. No SE and LE skins. Only Rare, Epic and Legendary skins.
  8. No Blueprint system or any crafting system.
  9. Ranked reward each season is a Free Ticket for any Legendary skin of the player’s choice. Can be stockpiled.
  10. Only Rare skins can be obtained via free grinding. Use Glory to purchase at a high price.
  11. Only Glory and ICE as currencies in Vainglory.
  12. ALL items can be purchased using ICE.
  13. Hats, Emotes and Social Pings can be purchased by using Glory as well. Part of the free grinding but also at a high price.
  14. Quest reworked to give Glory and occasionally very small amounts of ICE only.
  15. Adds give only Glory and a very small amount of ICE, with two rewards being a one hour Double Glory Booster. Adds reset at a certain time of the day regardless whether the limit of adds being watched or not has been reached.
  16. Rework U.I. to a better version of the old one prior to 5v5.
  17. Get rid or rework heroes that are orientated towards ramping up over time and/or lacking in mobility or function or are simply annoying to balance. By that I mean those like Reim, Ozo, Petal, Taka etc,
  18. Get rid of the rank display (as well as the ICE spender and 5v5 icons). The first triggers people and is inaccurate anyway. I’m tier 6 Bronze and it still displays tier 4 Silver.
  19. Get rid of Guilds. They’re clearly not working as intended.
  20. Improve Friend List U.I. and system.
  21. Improve Gameplay Recording and Replay Camera controls for Touch.

I think that’s all, for now at least.

5 Likes
9

Well the difference in accuracy between the two MM is quite big, I don’t think it’s only because it needs more players.

10

Wow, exactly the opposite as me XD

1 Like
11

4 more players aren’t an excuse for 6 tiers lower people in the games. Especially when 5v5 matches real fast compared to 3v3 and doesn’t wait for 8 minutes.

1 Like
12

The true elo of 3v3 and 5v5 for most players are similar unless they exclusively play only one mode. The difference in matchmaking quality is that both 3v3 and 5v5 use the same queue time (~5 mins) to find matches. So 3v3 spends 5 mins to find 6 players as accurate as possible, 5v5 spends 5 mins to find 10 players as accurate as possible. Then after a certain period it starts to match with players further apart and thats where 5v5 matchmaking suffers. I guess 5v5 matchmaking should allocate a larger period before it starts to prioritize speed over accuracy.

13

It’s to compete with the market really. I know you like 3v3 mostly, but it’s niche at best.

Though it’s good, I think VG needs to move on from there in order to survive since they seem to have thrown everything out of the window for 3v3 anyway.

14

This is ideal. I doubt vg will ever be able to completely balance both 3v3 and 5v5 modes without doing separate balancing. Bing bong has 3 queues: casual, ranked, and a seasonal gamemode.

Honestly there is so much stuff to rework i would just make a vainglory 2 and get everything right.

2 Likes
15

Heh, true.

They could use the old name to, “Kindred Asunder.”

In context with some of the lore, particularly the Stormsaga; it makes sense as it means the crumbling of one’s family relations.

To me, 5v5 being introduced was a warning sign that balance was going to be the thing players will complain the most about.

It was very clear to me as to why the Twisted Treeline in League failed to gain any form of traction with the community bar some very small niches.

So I’m surprised they didn’t learn from this despite some being former Riot employees and also League of Legends players.

16

I’ve been saying 3v3 should be shorter for a while now, because right now I really see no reason to player it over 5v5, it takes the same amount of time, but less happens, it’s simpler, and there is less room to make plays and show your skill. Even with the fairly bad meta of 5v5 it’s still the superior competitive mode. I don’t agree about the items. The old defense tree was ass, and I complained about it many times back in the day. It’s not ok for the only viable defense item on ranged heroes to be Aegis, or Aegis + MJ. What’s the point of items if there are no choices.

Regardless of the rest of the game, the new WP, CP, Defense, and Utility trees are simply better, offer more choices, and work better than the old ones. In the old wp tree pretty much the only viable build the majority of the time was Serpents mask/Sorrowblade into Breaking Point, or for a couple heroes SB, TM, TM, BS/TT. That’s literally it.

Also, regardless of what you think of them they can’t delete brawl modes. What they should do is add 2 5v5 brawl modes, and make them rotate over time.

17

I think the problem is that they’re using the same algorithm for both game modes

1 Like
18

Killing a big part of the community?

19

If it’s needed, yes, it shall be done.

Start anew with everything and work the game up from the bottom.

I’m probably going to get flamed for this, but I can’t help myself: It also gets rid of bad players and whiny veterans.

20

Yet it’s still the second most played mode. I for example play almost exclusively it, deleted and all those who play it over 5v5 will leave. Maybe, there are reasons to play it over 5v5 for those of us that play it, but just saying “there is no reason to play it” it’s false. By that logic there is no reason to play VG if you can play LoL.

1 Like