"Vainglory is dying" issue and here is my opinion about it. (Please read this post)

I don’t think VG is dying either, but I definitely don’t think it’s in a good place right now. The drumbeat of well-known orgs leaving esports without any official statement from SEMC speaks more to SEMC’s pathetic PR department than it does the game’s (and the company’s) health.

That said, there are VERY significant issues at the moment that threaten VG’s future, in my eyes. As @idmonfish mentioned above, the key question is this: Is the game fun to play?

In many cases, for many players, the answer is simply … no.

Rampant toxicity, significant bugs, continual connection issues, poor matchmaking … the list of issues which suck the fun out of a match … they’re all here in VG right now. Yet what we get is an endless focus on esports, which involves 100 players and maybe a few thousand fans. (And generates little or no revenue, it appears.)

Unless SEMC addresses the myriad problems with the core game, the player base will move on to other games. Already we’ve seen large numbers of long-time players leave; the current player base may be larger (no one actually knows, despite what certain community members have stated on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, etc.), but I’m concerned it’s far less attached to the game than were the veterans who’ve left.

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btw, why teams (not guild party, but team party) is allowed to play vs random soloq people?

Just yestarday I had a match vs a party of 5 team members (diff guilds, same team all) of 3 poa gold and 2 poa silvers. This vs me in soloq (t7 silver in 5vs5 currently), 1 poa bronze and 3 t5 players. Bug or intended behaviour as that game was just so unbalanced that it was funny. Teams are allowed to go vs soloq group?

Oh, and this in RANKED. :smiley:

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Very well said @hazeleyes (also some additional chars)

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Don’t listen to me, I just relayed information from FlashX’s video and Excoundrel’s video. Can’t say those videos are without fault but their points make sense. BTW, SEMC were PAYING MONEY to these orgs for them to be in the VG8. This money WAS their ADVERTISING BUDGET and it didn’t cost the orgs nearly as much money to join the VG8 as SEMC also paid for the players’ salary and trip cost. In return, content was needed to be made to be used as a form of advertising. After all, orgs generally should promote their own content. One of the fallacies of Flash’s video is that those orgs did make some content, in the form of streamers. However, in my opinion, the reason why streams and even youtube videos by the players won’t work is because they are also targeted to current VG players. Not the best way of content making, and really, that was all some orgs did as their content. I respect your opinion, but the last thing I may add is that take some orgs that are staying, Tribe and probably TSM. I’m just going to take Flash’s word but he claims that TSM created much more content than any other orgs. But take Tribe, their players actively stream and make youtube videos, but, like I said, that is mostly directed toward other VG players, maybe other MOBA players at most. Then there is Chief Pat, who owns Tribe and is a massive content creator for mobile. He is not only kind of close with SEMC but really, Tribe is actually a small org too. But most importantly, whenever Pat makes a VG video, which I will say he doesn’t do often, they get more views than Rumblysuperset, the biggest VG youtuber. However, I wouldn’t expect SEMC to be completely happy with the amount of content created but they KNOW THEY HAVE A MASSIVE SOURCE OF ADS IN CHIEF PAT. I believe that is also why Tribe remains.

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The one thing that Flash said which is 100% true is that Esports is not about making money - its all about advertising. Thats true in any game.

I think the core of the game (especially 5v5) is still good and a lot of the rest is a matter of getting systems set up right. And I am seeing the intent to do that, and active work on that.

Matchmaking has been a bug bear - especially at the start of this patch, but still even now I see too much variance in matches (actually I think thats the main issue right now).

By variance I mean I mean the skill tier within a “team” is too far apart. This is problematic for several reasons.

  1. If you are the guy who is the least skilled you will probably get pinged to death, and also farmed by a high skill opposing player
  2. If you are a higher skill player then whether you win or not will often be controlled by things like - did your team’s lowest skill players end up in bot or mid? How even are the match ups in each role? Etc.

So that makes it both less fun for everyone, much more likely to become toxic, and much more likely to see afks.

This is a known issue and they are working on it. However at the top top end - they can only work with what they have in the match maker and lots of top top players mostly scrim rather than rank queue so its always going to be a mixed bag - that was the case in 3v3, and 5v5 requires more people rather than less. That said I have some faith that over time it will get better - in part because everyone is still very new at 5v5 - even most pros don’t really play that well at this stage - they win because of their mechanics not because of their understanding and knowledge.

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So this I can answer - its basically a trade off - once a team hits a certain point of queuing the pool they can be matched against expands ie goes higher and lower in tier. After a certain further point it expands as well to include solo queuers - on the basis that a match up with them will be more even than with any 5 man teams that are queuing.

Ie better that that team queues into you despite the disparity than if they queue into a 5 man squad of T4 players.

Doesn’t make you feel any better about the loss, obviously - but it is still better match making - from what is apparently available at the time.

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Thanks for the answer… sadly it looks like not so many players are playing the game for all the modes + 10 people in the same game. As this happens more than not and in a more populated times (i.e. not in 3am week day).

Its a bit more complex than that - because the matchmaker also tries (at least on some servers) to take consideration of where players are located to reduce ping. So there can be players at your skill level on and queuing who you don’t match with because although they are on “your server” they are too far away for a fun fight.

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Arn’t you on a sabbatical? This text will be blurred

Vainglory is not dying it has just never left beta state. With it never leaving beta it is not ready for esports especially with the network issues going on. Could you imagine a tournament won because of a player lagging out that would destroy esports forever for the game. Tbh SEMC shouldn’t support any group until they have gotten their game to a competitive level

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Nope, I am not on a sabbatical. I am enjoying more free time though!

Absolutely. And every sport! (More chars here!)

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