There’s a misconception – which I’m not saying you have, but some have – that it’s impossible to get a Versus match on PC, even during primetime. In actuality, when there’s around 300 players online, a player can still find an Incursion match within 10 minutes, or 5 minutes, if a full team of 5 is brought into the queue. That’s North American matchmaking, of course… mileage certainly varies in other regions.
The problem is you’re going to either be matched with the same 10-15 solo players, in various combinations, or the same 5-man team multiple times in a row. When players in that small, known pool start to cheat, it drives everyone to play in a hyper-aggressive manner, using only heroes that work best in such an environment.
This makes picking cloaking heroes such as Pendles and Deande a bad idea due to wallhack, which outlines cloaked players in the same way it outlines them through walls. Picking anyone with a large profile such as Kleese and Montana is a bad idea, as their size puts them at a severe disadvantage against any character using an aimbot.
So everyone narrows their picks down to heroes that gives cheaters the least advantage, such as Ghalt and Galilea with their stun-based KOs, or Ambra for her healing and escape potential, or Ernest for his ability to put absurd sentry-murdering DPS downrange. These cookie-cutter team compositions, coupled with the tunnel vision of KO-obsessed players, breed ugly matches where objectives are frequently ignored, and both teams butt heads over and over in the minion lane, always ready to pounce on the weakest gazelle when he/she is separated from the herd.
In short, you can find an Incursion match most of the time, but it will typically end up being mindless, repetitive, and dissatisfying, the same as the last ten matches before it. Sprinkle in some cheaters, and the whole experience feels terribly pointless.
Here’s to tomorrow’s changes…
