Source
r/heroesofthestorm•
CaptainCaring

Solos and Stacks: What's REALLY different?

Discussion

I don't need this to become a diatribe on anyone or anything. I just need to know: what, about teaming up, immediately makes some players lose?

The whole "stack vs solo" thing is a long contested issue, but I lend what I think is an incredibly valid point to every single discussion on it: there are no different expectations on either side. One side just partied up-- that doesn't even technically give them access to anything the solos don't have, or an advantage, not insomuch as it's anything the other team doesn't have.

All they supposedly have is teamwork, but that's a crucial part of winning-- dare I say it-- any team game regardless of if you stack. So why is it that we seem to expect so much less of solo players, or so much more of parties? More importantly than that, how is it that solo players don't seem to think to bring any of these tools to bear (teamwork, communication, strategy)?

Posted Oct 20, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

1324
Senshado•

All they supposedly have is teamwork

Being in a group gives you more than just teamwork: there's at least hero composition and mmr spread.

In Quickmatch, a group can have advantage in hero composition, because they don't go through the matchmaker rules for what it considers a balanced team.

For example, you can pick the 5 assassins with the highest winrates. That means your opponent will also be 5 assassins, no healer/bruiser/tank, and they also won't get any of the top 5. So your comp is favored to win.

And in a group, it is possible to accidently or intentionally manipulate mmr spread, where some members have estimated skill or true skill that's not equal to each other. For example, if the world number 1 top player is grouped with a new gold account, should the system pick enemies that are all grandmaster? Or average in something lower? Depending on what it does, the group can get an advantage.

24
RiokaiiWildHeart Esports•

by far the biggest advantage is role spread.

In a stack, you don't queue into a game with 5 ranged assassin mains where you get people offrole on tank, offlane etc.

4
Ta55adar•

I chose to play with my friends for who they are, not what they play. Happens to be a few heal mains, no main tank, rest assa.

2
CaptainCaringOP•

MMR I'll grant but I feel it's a different issue. We could go blue in the face talking MMR setups and all but most likely is none of them would ever hit Blizz' planning table given this game is on maintenance.

I'll also grant comp, except that comp is also general game knowledge and in ranked both teams have an equal opportunity.

The issue really seems at heart to be that pugs have gotten away with being broadly detrimental players for long enough that the behavior is now expected rather than condemned. A sort of, "Well, we tried, but..." level of resignation.

Which, I think, is the foundation for a whole new discussion. But I digress! You have fantastic points for me to mull over here.

3
Talcxx•

Mmmm there are a few crucial points you haven’t realized yet. To begin with, you’ve filled a team slot with someone that you know isn’t going to throw or go afk (hopefully). This is a small benefit because it’s based on the chance that you might’ve gotten someone throwing instead of the person you partied with, but it has massive impact in lower ranks where it’s more common.

The second, and more important point that you missed, is knowing each other’s playstyle, and if you ‘mesh’. This point cannot be overstated because it makes a world of difference. Knowing each other’s playstyle means less failed expectations. Personally, I play very aggro. I like to play dive heroes or heroes who make teamfights feel chaotic. Me playing with a tank that I know and have played with previously let’s me gauge how I should play much better than if I’m playing with a random because I’ve got no idea if they’ll follow me in and engage with me, or if they like to play more passively/defensively. This isn’t even something hots specific, it’s cooperation specific in general, even in real life. Working with someone you know is often more effective than working with someone you don’t. If I’m playing with my best friend who plays aggro tanks, I know that I’ll have backup in engages. This means both less brainpower put into figuring out engages, and it lets me focus more on my own mechanics play because I don’t need to look out for if my tank is with me or not.

Also, some players just don’t mesh, even personality wise. If I’m feeling aggravated because someone on my team is just a type of personality I dislike, my own play will worsen and so will my teammates probably.

Another thing, which is very specific for the 1% of hots, is that if you’re grouping with all masters or grandmasters in a 5 stack, the game (usually) can’t find a balanced game for you because there are such few players currently playing at your rank as well. Additionally, the power of communication and coordination scales with player skill. If the scenario is every stack is tryharding and wanting to win the most across all ranks, master+ groups will see much, much more effect from being in a stack. They’re better players so they can give more informed, and honestly more useful, call outs. They also follow up more on calls made. You can call to dive x hero in a team of solos, but not everyone will listen because of the innate lack of trust people have for other people they don’t know/don’t believe in. Stacks get around this issue because of mutual trust. A 5 stack in masters can easily get 95%+ winrate, which has been shown time and time again.

Super king post, I’m sorry. TL;DR: teamwork is important. Teamwork is easier to do well if you’re playing with people you know other than randoms. Teamwork scales with player skill, becoming an issue at the 1%.

10
SerphTheVoltarInevitable. Indominatable.•

I'm not sure if this is quite what you mean, but...

If we're talking draft, the most notable difference is that if you're partied up there's a strong chance you have voice chat going. Among randoms, most people don't like to use voice chat. So the solo player is at a disadvantage of "has to type instead of speak" in a lot of situations. Beyond that there's the fact that partying up often involves getting to speak a lot more beforehand (like discussing comfort picks and having a draft strategy beforehand, which is harder to do on the fly in the draft screen), and building an understanding of the team mate's playstyle over multiple games if you continue to play together.

I think it's super worth noting that the imbalance isn't very big in draft. People exaggerate it greatly, because they don't think about the times they won against the stack. For example, Heroes Profile shows that in Storm League on current patch, when it comes to 5-stack vs 2-stack + 3 solos, it's only 55% winrate in the 5-stack's favour. Sure, 5% is significant, but in most patches we have at least one hero with a winrate that high. This number goes up substantially when you limit to higher leagues, but the amount of data decreases dramatically. Even at 58% when you're only looking at Diamond or Master, that's still not as insurmountable as some people seem to think.

(5-stack vs 5 solos isn't worth discussing because the matchmaker is so heavily biased against allowing that to happen that there's literally only 19 recorded matches of it on this patch, compared to 1522 of the 5-stack vs 2-stack + 3 solos)

Some people will also say that stacks are more likely to have good players because bad players will get dropped from the stack, but... it's a hard point to prove. If one Plat 1 player is awful and another Plat 1 player is amazing, theory is that one or both will stop being Plat 1, after all. Much more relevant in Masters where the skill gap within a match can widen significantly. Another dicussion entirely, though.

So when it comes to Storm League, stacking isn't really a huge difference at the end of the day. Which heroes you pick may have a higher influence on your winrate than stacking with similarly-skilled players. It can help, especially if you're good with voice chat, but being against a 5-stack isn't really a death sentence.

Of course, this is discounting that lots of people think of smurfing/boosting when they think of stacking in Storm League, but that's an entirely different discussion.

In Quick Match, stacking is a lot more volatile because you can abuse the way team compositions are matched up by doing stuff like Cho'gall + Abathur with no healer, which is something that healerless teams will struggle greatly against. A Medivh, Zarya or other Abathur just can't keep up. It's not incidental that instead of the 55% we saw in Storm League, in Quick Match the winrate of 5-stacks against 2-stack + 3 solos is 70%. Limited to high MMR (what Heroes Profile calls Diamond/Master QM), it spikes above 80%.

7
CaptainCaringOP•

This is what I wanted-- there are tons of small things to latch onto, but the cumulative effect is mostly theoretical and the practiced numbers show a story that suggests something entirely mundane instead.

Thank you for the detailed reply! Yes, I avoided boosting (or MMR gaming) as points because I feel they're different issues that are just bleeding into this particular one.

1
TradeMasterYellow:nova: Nova•

The primary benefit of a 5-stack is you are guaranteed to not have an AFK on your team.

6
CaptainCaringOP•

Honestly, that's my first reaction. Rather than 'securing an advantage,' partying seems more like providing a base level of insurance.

That, of course, ties into my point that expectations of solo players are absolutely abysmal, and non-hyperbolically include non-performance as an issue. Scarier yet when those expectations actually reflect reality...

How one would even begin to try and address that is beyond me, though.

2
slvstrChung•

The answer is, some people don't play Heroes to be on a team with other people. They play to prove that they can drag others kicking and screaming across the finish line.

5
CaptainCaringOP•

I guess what I want is to repeal that because it's my kneejerk answer: complaining about stacks is the roundabout escape from admitting they suck at working as part of a team themselves.

The other answer is that pugs have come to suck so hard that they lose against any semblance of cooperation, but aren't the stacks also pulling from that player pool? Makes a man hmm'st've.

The last point I have is that bad players are bad whether or not they stack and stacking isn't always correlated to skill (IE be good = get party), and that sometimes a player is just bad and would lose to 5 solos or a 5 stack or anything not worse than them.

1
slvstrChung•

Well, yeah. Nobody wants to admit they suck. To quote the old meme, "feels bad man". And we don't play video games to feel bad. If anything, we play them to feel good.

As to your point about stacks: you're right, the players are (at least theoretically) of equal skill. Therefore, "skill" is not 100% responsible for determining which team wins or loses. The other element is cooperation, subsuming your own desires to that of your team. Which is, yes, your first point: some people suck at working as part of a team. More importantly, some people don't want to work as part of a team. This is precisely why they complain that Heroes isn't a 100% skill game: because that's what they want to play. They want to win a 1v9. Which is fair, but they have DotA and LoL for that. Heroes sets itself apart because cooperation is so important to success in the Nexus. Either they like it for that reason... or they whine on Reddit, and people like you and me start these threads wondering why they're here at all. ;)

1
ChukonokuAbathur•

Outside of abusing external factors of balance like say team composition in QM or MMR exploits in ranked, i would say a big component is trust.

A party is much more likely to be cohesive. On a fast pace game, even in non competitive levels, a couple of seconds of doubt are the difference between winning or losing. You can shotcall, give advice or criticism without the risk of having a nuclear meltdown by some player who will go afk/feed.

You don't even need VOIP.

On top of that, you are less likely to get into weird comps without the party agreeing on it.

Let me put it this way, parties have a much higher floor of performance by the sole nature of been in a party and a much higher ceiling of performance if they are using VOIP.

On the other hand, solos floor starts way lower due to the increasing factor of self sabotage and while the ceiling can be similar, it will never be reached due to lack of confidence on each other.

5
FridayBakery•

I can lead a team of bronze players to beat 5 solo plat players by shot calling.

Solo plats know how to play the game (sometimes), they are just stuck there because they dont group. Bronze players can be mechanically good but have no idea how to really play the game, but with some direction they can be plat level players with some direction.

5
Ta55adar•

I can tell you from experience that's an exaggeration (unless your individual skill is good enough to beat 5 Plats with support from your team but then that's up to your skill and not just the shotcalling of 4 Bronze 5s). It is entirely possible Bronze players will ignore calls, or not understand them. E.g. "2 dead, let's kill that fort now." "cool let me finish that camp real quick" " no, I said now" "don't worry I'll do this really quick". And time window is gone. (And that's from Plat level)

Listening to calls is also a skill that has to be worked on. Sometimes it's because they're not used to listening. Sometimes it's because they don't have experience (refer to example above where the player feels he must finish what he started and doesn't realise he can stop and get better value elsewhere because that's how he always played before). Maybe if you played with the same Bronze 5 players for a while it may be a closer game.

But even then you'd have to handpick the Bronze players who keep their supposed good mechanics under pressure. Bronze vs Bronze one may look like they have good mechanics, but put against a higher elo player, that same player is likely to look worse because they haven't experienced someone fighting back better because that higher elo player has more experience about how the match up will go. So maybe they could be Plat level if organised, but that will likely require practice against that level first. (E.g. Bronze Jaina hits her combo against a player. Looks good, skill shots hit. A low elo enemy player runs away because he has low hp. A higher elo player will realise Jaina has cooldowns and fight back and the Bronze Jaina may be surprised and mess up by someone suddenly fighting back.)

I played with the same Bronze 5 player since he was friend of a friend, he would die from face checking the same bush several times in a row in the same game even with our vocal warning, he just didn't know how to listen "they're telling me this, but surely the enemy won't be there again". And he was lvl2500 ish so plenty of time spent in game. Not everyone will get the game. Sometimes a Bronze 5, does belong in Bronze 5. It's not a shameful thing, people are just built differently for different things.

Edit: I don't know why I thought I read Bronze 5 specifically but point still stands with all Bronze (and I'd extend it to higher ranks)

6
CaptainCaringOP•

This is my experience. One of my fondest MOBA games was in an SC2 custom map, where I took one look at our two teams as we were being beaten back, and I said fuggit-- follow this strat, move where I tell you to, and we'll turn this right on its ass. And they did, and we did, but that was legitimately back in... lessee, maybe 2009.

Camaraderie seems-- eh, less prevalent now?

2
Potential-Witness-83•

Bronze is too vague honestly. I'm diamond 3-5 solo on my main each season. On my smurf I got started in silver 5 and saw a lot of decent players who were just stuck in bronze hell. I'm working my way through gold now, would be in plat soon if ranked population wasn't MIA.

1
MrSquirrel_CL:zeratul: Master Zeratul•

Communication basically. When stacked up you can coordinate faster and even explain over voice chat a more complex strategy. Non-stacked players basically only rely on pings and other players situation awareness and situation-reading capabilities

4
pseudomemer•

I just played a 5 stack today when we had a 2 stack. Difference was coordination. They just did the same chain combo over and over again and we knew it was coming but couldn't comminicate well enough to overcome it. You can never coordinate good enough to beat a well executed team if you are randoms unless you are just mechanically way better, which isn't the case in 99% of games.

4
Potential-Witness-83•

When I describe 5 stack below I'm referring to those wanting to win. Not 5 people playing under the influence.

  • in QM massive advantage of having chosen comp vs possible random non synergy garbage comp.

  • in all modes near no chance of troll, rage, afk, language barrier

  • in ranked(especially diamond+) good possibility they are exploiting shady tactics. Either by having secondary accounts they load up hoping to afk with on enemy side or they only play at specific times when more likely to go against lower skilled players.

  • in all modes high chance of using one or more smurf account to make for easy/auto wins.

  • in all modes voice communication is easier and advantageous over those typing and ping spamming..."but but 5 randos could do this too. The game supports joining voice," few people want to join that mess. It's bad enough trying to get the bronze 5 you were gifted to stop giving pro tips to the diamond players.

The issue with statistics that are commonly thrown around to prove these issues aren't as bad, is that those numbers don't take into account the difference in rank and whether it is 5 randos on drugs or 5 diamond smurfs.

4
JuuzaamFenix•

There 2 major differences between 5man teams and solos. A 5 man can play a certain draft or strategy 5 solos just cant do that well because of communication. On a specific rank, 5 more coordinated can just outdraft the opponent team or just cheese them. getting 5 randoms on cheesy push, macro or just aba/medivh comp doesnt work. Beside this, when you play in a 5man, you never get griefed in draft, but solo you get last pick Nova, tripple backline and what ever. So first, the draft is different.

Worse is the team play in game, a coordinated combo or an invade, maybe a fight or gank is just way faster done by a 5man than 5 solos. The option to bring a smurf into this makes it even worse, like getting a higher ranked genji/zera or just a good master mage player into platin matches is just insane.

Whoever things solo should be playing vs 5mans should be forced to play solo vs these 5mans for the rest of his Hots carrer. The edge is just to big.

3
CaptainCaringOP•

It's not that I don't get that communication leads to better play, it's that I wonder why solo players always get the slip. Randoms are just as capable, it's that they appear to be unwilling by all this testimony.

I guess in that respect, my question is where this culture of acceptance-of-suckage came from.

Because that's what that is: failing to communicate as a team has nothing to do with matchmaking systems, it's to do with the players who choose to play in a way that directly harms team health. We're not talking about picking Muradin when Diablo would've been a better draft, we're talking about ignoring cohesion in the actual teamplay. They're deliberately eschewing a fundamental part of the game (IE cooperating with the team in the first place).

I want to know when it became accepted, that solo players just 'get' to perform worse and that that's somehow a fault of stacks or matchmaking.

Given the current system, no solo player would know if they're up against teams without prodding about for the info anyway.

2
Elitesparkle:arthas: Master Arthas, the Lich King•

One side just partied up-- that doesn't even technically give them access to anything the solos don't have, or an advantage, not insomuch as it's anything the other team doesn't have.

No one ever mentioned one of the main advantages we get when playing in Party: the opportunity to play with players who don't overlap Roles with each other, because there is no Role-based queue in this game.

3
almightybob1•

The main difference is cohesion. You simply can't develop it instantly with strangers the way you can with people you play with regularly.

This is true not just in HOTS but in all multiplayer games, IRL sports, and really any area where humans are working together. It's not a coincidence that sports teams train together all the time.

You see it all the time in football (soccer for the yanks). Players who play together on the same team develop a synergy of thought. They know what their teammate is thinking and how they will react to the situation, often without any communication required.

They often get to the point where e.g. a midfielder can play a pass into a certain area without even looking, knowing their striker will make the run. And the striker starts the run the moment the midfielder gets the ball, knowing the pass is coming into that area.

You also often see it go the other way, when a new player enters the starting XI and both they and the team as a whole underperform, because that synergy is lost and has to be built up again. The midfielder will play the blind pass but the new striker made a totally different run.

It's an evolutionary feature from when we hunted in packs, chasing and corralling wild animals, working together as a team that all thinks the same thing at the same time. But it takes time to develop the bond.

3