So lately i had no motivation to open the vainglory app, you might say i am just titled and i need a break but after reflecting for a while on the situation i’ve come to the conclusion that there is just no way to enjoy playing vainglory not just for me but for anyone in general.
Casually the game has been a real bummer for a while, you can play blitz for a while its pretty fun at low ranks cause most players have low level talents, but then you will eventually reach high elo and its basically the complete opposite of fun, the kind of experience that makes you never wanna play the game mode again. Casual 5v5 also totally sucks and it’s entirely down to the match making in this game mode, 90% of games are usually one sided massacres cause the match maker can very easily put 5 mid to high tier players in one team and 5 low tiers/beginners in the other or match a team of solos into a full party. The rotating game modes seemed great at first but their execution has been very poor specially in one for all, they literally chose the worst heroes possible for such a game mode and giving both sides the same hero makes it just gross to play. And now they removed the battle pass and besides the chests you get for leveling up, there is literally no progression system/rewards that give players an incentive to grind the game. Like for real lets say that the casual games modes didn’t have the issues that i just mentioned why would play vainglory regularly ? There is nothing for you to achieve, no goal to pursue, the battle pass wasn’t great but at least it was something, instead of completely removing it they should have found a way to improve it.
Playing the game competitively is just pure torture, like climbing to tier 10 is relatively simple and as long as you’re an above average player and put some effort into it you will get there without too much frustration. Once you hit vainglorious bronze tho the higher you get in that elo the more frustrating it gets. Because of how the ranked matchmaker works the higher your mmr is the more you’re likely to start games with a handicap and what i mean by that is that the matchmaker will either give you teammates with low mmr to compensate for yours or it will match you against duo q or trio q with 4 solo q teammates. Tbh the low mmr teammates treatment i can cope with but the trio q treatment is when it will require a miracle to win that game. In the low end of vg bronze in the 2400 to 2450 range you will very rarely face those issues but i’ve reached 2550 elo last season and at this point i would get fucked by the matchmaker in almost every game. Trying to solo q to vg silver has made me lose my sanity, i either get tilted cause i played the best i could and still lost cause the matchmaker felt like handicapping me, or i tilt myself cause i played at 90 or 80% of my best and i would feel so down cause i made 1 or 2 major mistakes that i shouldn’t have done and had an impact on the game outcome. I was at 2550 elo with 3 weeks to go before the end of the season and i just stopped ranking, i could have reached vg silvers but i didn’t feel like losing my mind for a trophy, ranking has brought the worse out of me i am literally the worst teammate you can get i get so upset and toxic its pathetic. And i am not the only, once i reached that elo basically everyone in my games was like me, i feel like the solo q ranking experience just frustrates most people. Besides the matchmaking issues the recent balancing decisions also ruin the ranking experience in general, the only good thing about this patch balancing is the baron nerf. The decision to leave so many broken heroes untouched or barely nerfed is just beyond me, leaving Reza San Feng Yates and Celeste untouched, barely nerfing Grumpjaw Magnus and Joule at all, bringing Kinetic back to her broken state when she was finally bearable. And now you have to add Kensei into that list, yes he was pretty weak but they buffed him beyond belief instead of slowly making him better. Right now you can literally win or lose a game before they even begun, you have to be a meta slave and stick to a very limited poo of heroes, going even slightly off meta can totally screw your chances of winning.
In all honesty vainglory is unplayable in my opinion, it sucks to play casually and it sucks to play competitively, really the only way to enjoy the game is the play with a group of friends and even then you will lose the motivation to play because the lack of rewards and progression. The people at Semc have put all their focus on crossplatform ignoring all the issues in the game, but their plans have failed miserably, vainglory is basically dead on steam and it won’t be long before it dies on mobile too.
I’m not sure it’s unplayable, but it’s definitely getting increasingly frustrating for me. The rampant bugs, the horrific matchmaking, the toxicity, and now the utter lack of any sense of progression have killed the enthusiasm I felt for the game last season.
I don’t think VG and SEMC are nearly as unhealthy as you think they are, but there are indeed serious, fundamental problems that need to be addressed.
Can you give me a list of players made it to vg silver in 5v5 without party ? , I don’t think that’s possible with the matchmaking , I would assume people abused the matchmaker to reach higher tiers as players in party going to fight soloq , easy win .
I disagree on Blitz, I’m not a crazy high ELO, but I’m usually between 2300 and 2400 blitz elo which is above most of my guildmates/friendlist, I don’t buy talents coins at all, and I find this game mode fun. It’s fast paced, intense, you need to give full focus for 5 minutes, and then done.
Casual 5v5, fully agree, matchmaking makes this mode awful. Some of my guildmates nearly exclusively play this mode to farm guild points. They crush enemy team by being a team of 5 vs low rank soloq and then think they’re top players >.<
When matchmaking ■■■■ up in blitz or ranked, it’s also torture, as you describe it. And yeah, soloqueing rank was fun until T9.
I don’t dislike the current meta, but I agree that last balance patch was barely impactful
Season pass, sun dial, well we all share the same opinion on those forums.
Agree with all but this. I don’t feel like reza is op. He seems busted but now his kit plays quite badly, specially in team fights. He had a 48% WR, so justifying a nerf was hard. About San Feng… I would like to see a stun duration reduced from 1.2s to 0.9/0.9/0.9/0.9/1.2. Reducing the damage of his B but giving him better ratios would maybe be good, but so far from what I’ve seen in WESG and in my matches the stun seems the main problem.
Yates needed a nerf, that actually surprised me quite a bit. Celeste should have been touched too, every time she becomes op is for the same reason: other mages being nerfed but her. Nerfing Varya but not Celeste seems… weird.
The GJ changes were more like a tweak. He needed a hard nerf, not that. Joule I think was relatively well done, she was hurled in the early a lot, but a damage reduction in late game would be welcomed. Magnus needed a harder nerf, I don’t expect him to be balanced any time soon. He will still be op until they decide it’s time to stop and take him out of the meta.
Kinetic buff makes no sense, she is not broken.
Is kensei that op though? I haven’t played much this update for the various reasons you already said.
And to conclude, I’m mad with how they are treating Vox, making a new Magnus is not the way to go, and he will be weak until that ult is broken enough to it alone compete with the other mages. #BringBackWPVox
I can so relate to this. I got to t10 like 2 seasons back and that time getting to t10 was still a thing. Now everyone gets to t10. Donkeys, monkeys, buffaloes, cows, everyone. Last season i bothered to play only cos of the battle pass. This season i have no reason to rank or play the game. I know i can reach VG silver if i push but eh. Its just not worth it. There are so many useless VG silvers whom ive beaten so many times. Just grind and VG silver is yours. I liked VG for its quality. The nice skins that i loved grinding for. Now they put everything inside RNG. At least with the BP id get like 1 or 2 new skins from the blueprint chests and golden chests/keys. Now even that isnt there. Like you said, theres nothing left to get in the game. Its plain boring. SEMC have screwed up big. They implement changes that the player base never asked for. God knows what they are doing making VG for PC. This game probably has about 2 years left. I really want to live but its the first game ive spent so much time on and thats the only reason i am still holding on. Theres just no reason to play VG anymore. Games are supposed to relax you and VG definitely isnt relaxing. If the dont add the battle pass back, i m definitely leaving VG.
Matchmaker really does need a major overhaul. Sick of being matched with BRAND NEW players that do not understand that they need to build support items yet as they probably do not have someone teaching them. It is not fu. For veterans due to hard to carry teams and not fun for low tier players for getting steam rolled by veterans. I’d accept a 3 tier gap at LEAST
Yeah, it’s clear that they’ve tuned the MM for low queue times rather than quality matches, but the problem is that it’s now really rare to get a decent match in most modes.
I also find the season reset to be unbearable. The first 2-3 weeks of each season, the quality of games, at least from my experience, is SO poor. Awful coordination. Toxic chat. Awful draft. I finally got to play some games yesterday. I went 3-6 and each game I felt I was playing with people on their first day.
Despite my record, I climbed about 75 elo… Which is to everyone’s point about a terrible mmr and elo progression system…
I really think vst should have no role. MMR should be based on a balance of KDA and win percentage with the emphasis on the latter. I also don’t feel there should be as deep of a drop each season. I do like the idea of a reset after each major patch or year (ie next major reset at 5.0, then 6.0)
Overall, I disagree with your post. I find VG very playable despite my frustrations. I like the variety of modes and audience it caters to. For me, playing VG has never been about “rewards”, it’s been about the ability to play a decent MOBA on mobile and the challenge of playing others in a real-time game that blends individual skill and teamwork.
I would say 75% of vg silvers get it trough trio q and full parties but you can definitely get it solo, grinding is more dedication than talent. In all honesty i could have got silver, i gave up on it cause it was too draining.
The thing about pc games is that you can’t hide anywhere, all the numbers can be accessed on the steam charts. Vainglory is a new game yet the active player base almost shrunk in half since the first week of launch, when a game peaks in the first week of launch that’s when you know it failed. These numbers are also inflated by players who made a transition from mobile to pc, unless a miracle marketing compaign saves Vg its gonna be completely dead on steam in a couple of months and mobile wont be long to follow considering how much was put on the line for crossplatform.
However, I don’t disagree that the numbers on Steam aren’t encouraging – though they were entirely predictable by anyone who took a moment to think about the fact that the game is riddled with bugs and compares unfavorably to established PC MOBAs like League and DotA 2.
I still can’t understand them dedicating the resources to making VG cross-platform before fixing the problems with the core game.
Yes exactly they want to push an unfinished product to steam, that’s what the reviews say anyway on steam, most people liked the game but its lacking some key elements for them to play it.
And here is the second top rated review.
Both saying the same thing, game is fun its missing the key elements a pc moba players is looking for. Customable key binds got added this patch but in my opinion they’ve waited way too long, there is really no excuses the things that were mentioned in the reviews should have been there from the start. The game had its chance to break trough, but now that its no longer on the front page of steam i can’t see the player base climbing back up unless like i said a miracle marketing campaign is launched and saves the day. Knowing semc and their history with marketing i don’t have any hopes.
I can see why people say Vainglory is unplayable, and I agree.
I do play daily though, because it’s a bit of a habit and I truly enjoy playing Rumble despite the last few games pushing my blood pressure up.
I blame idiot SAWs and CP Barons plus innappropriate picks and builds for griefing. These are not new players too, cause the 5v5 founder badge. I give leeway to those that don’t have this badge because they are usually new players.
On your issue about getting handicapped in 2500+ its true but that means you have to adapt as well. There’s usually a series of games going on in 30 minute intervals between the same 10 players and all you need to do is get your MMR higher than one of the 10 people.
I soloQd to VG silver for the summer season as a top and bot lane main then in the winter season my highest was 2590s but since I didn’t play much because of 3.9 (3.8 was tolerable as a good top laner but I felt like I was getting cucked so badly during that patch, I ended up with a 30% WR for 5s and decided to play 3s where I easily reached VG Silver with a 65% WR). This season though I feel like I have a 60% WR and a thick KDA of 3-4 with my kills and assists being at double digits. I’ve started maining jungle and it feels like a breath of fresh air.
My two suggestions for you is to friend as many people as possible and snipe them (or party) to get some good matches, because everyone wants them. As well as maybe try to get a new role.
I thought for a while that I needed to be a mid laner main even though I’m best with melees but the jungling position just clicked. There hasn’t been one match yet where I legit feel tilted besides mid wanting to take lvl 1 CP buff.
Totally agree here. They’re just letting it get worse and worse, and eventually it’ll hit a point where it actually is literally unplayable. Now that the battle pass is gone I have no motivation to play (although that may also partly be due to the boarding house IT guy fixing the ethernet for my Switch - I can’t get off Splatoon).
One of the main problems in my opinion though is that there’s so many influencial community members (e.g. Excoundrel, Nivmett) who just go on and on on social media about the good parts of the game, creating this illusion of a happy community that SEMC. Excoundrel’s positiveness in particular has been annoying me as of late. I know he criticised San Feng and Kinetic Power but it feels like too little too late.
This is correct, I reach 2100 elo like 6-7 times. Every single one of them when I did, I started to get matched with vg silvers in the enemy team, trioqs in soloq all of my team, ofc 5 VG players and I got 2 poa bronze and so on. My point is, every single time I reach around 2100 elo I start to have only loses and I mean for 30 games straight! With only 2-3 wins for color, leading to drop to 2350 elo poa gold or around 2400 elo.
Then all repeat, I win more than lose, reach 2100 elo and yep, 20-30 games straight losing. To say I have fun in that would be a lie and it’s obvious that I am handicapped in most of those loses and the teams are not fair.
