I do enjoy Heroes a good bit when I am playing with my friends. It's atrocious when you queue solo or with a partner, though, and mostly because of matchmaking.

I have a love/hate relationship with the objective based gameplay. It's a great way to shake up the typical competitive MOBA gameplay, but the maps are in DIRE need of a proper balancing/tuning. Or at the very least, matchmaking needs to look at the team compositions and fit them to a map that is appropriate.

And unlike most other MOBAs, by the time you are max level you are still getting matched up with people who don't understand the fundamentals -- no lane soaking for xp, taking 3 into a lane and leaving the other 2 to manage 3 lanes on their own, etc. It's like the go-to game for casual soccer dads, which is okay if that's what you are... but having previous MOBA experience just leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth about the whole thing. It's frustrating just how fucking bad some of the players can be even at max level with a metric ton of experience under their belt.

The matchmaking, though. It's so bad. SO BAD.

Beyond pairing up 5-man teams against 5 solo queue people (who are promptly rolled), matchmaking fucking sucks at pairing champs together properly. It'll put together a team with an Abathur, Nova, and Cho'Gall and then drop them on a map with 3 lanes. No coverage, experience falls behind because you don't have folks in lanes, and there's not a god damned thing you can do about it except wait out the loss.

For those that don't play, experience is earned through player kills and by being near minions when they die (soaking). Champs like Nova are stealth assassins that are best suited to floating between lanes applying pressure and keeping the enemy team honest. Abathur is an augment champ that doesn't have a traditional presence in a lane (typically he stays in base/behind walls). He spawns little siege minions and can attach to a friendly champion/minion to provide a boost and some extra attacks. He's great in a traditional team, but puts extra pressure on the team early on because they'll be 2v1 in a lane. Cho'Gall is a single champ played by two people... so you're immediately down another body/champ when you get a Cho.

So when you get a chogall with an abathur and a nova, you're basically fucked. You'll have one dude in a lane hoping for the best, a nova that doesn't know how to adapt to the lack of lane presence, and a cho'gall that's filling their diaper somewhere because he is hard to play properly.

And it's not just the ones I named -- swap nova with zeratul/any other jungling stealth assassin and the problem is incredibly common. It doesn't help that stealth assassins are some of the most fun classes to play.

There's no ability to surrender, either.

HOTS has SO MUCH potential to be great. Just doesn't deliver, though.