Bring Back 5 Man Ranked Que - Needs To Happen At This Point - Solo/Duo Failed

[Awe.1096]

I play ranked during seasons and obviously unranked during off-season. I queue only solo. And every off-season reminds me how good it is that 5m cant queue in ranked. One week of unranked gives me more rage than an entire season. Mostly getting farmed by 3-4-5 teams. Also Im not even sure if there is any matchmaking there. I am merely a gold player but I feel like Im often facing plat 1700+ as I see them doing things I never experience in ranked.

 

I know this is only my own 3 copper but every player is entitled to have one. Do you really think that an entire game should balanced around a bunch of min-maxers who cheat/win-trade their way around to the legendary? You want the majority (yes) of players to face frequent 500-50 blowouts just so the tip of the iceberg can be more balanced? I am only gold but according to gw2efficiency.com I am higher than 60% of its users (and possibly even more as total noobs dont use such tools more often than not). So you want to have 80%+ of game population to be merely a cannon fodder for a handful of min-maxers? I am sure that would help with low PVP population. Not.

[sephiroth.4217]

> @"plushiesoda.8150" said:

> I'm starting to hope that they bring back team queue... just to see the same pro-team-queuing-advocates complain about having to spend half an hour for a match to start, just to be trampled 500-10 by a superior team.

 

Wouldn't queue times go down because more people are playing?

Wouldn't the match making work better because there are more people playing?

 

I remember there used to be heaps of players when Team Queue was an option that even HOTJOIN rooms had players.

[Jace al Thor.6745]

> @"sephiroth.4217" said:

> > @"plushiesoda.8150" said:

> > I'm starting to hope that they bring back team queue... just to see the same pro-team-queuing-advocates complain about having to spend half an hour for a match to start, just to be trampled 500-10 by a superior team.

>

> Wouldn't queue times go down because more people are playing?

> Wouldn't the match making work better because there are more people playing?

>

> I remember there used to be heaps of players when Team Queue was an option that even HOTJOIN rooms had players.

 

The problem with that is the assumption people would come back to play PvP. Currently, with balance and lack of maps, I don’t see people swarming back to play just because team queue is back.

[Ragion.2831]

There was a vote, community voted overwhelmingly against it.

[sephiroth.4217]

> @"Jace al Thor.6745" said:

> > @"sephiroth.4217" said:

> > > @"plushiesoda.8150" said:

> > > I'm starting to hope that they bring back team queue... just to see the same pro-team-queuing-advocates complain about having to spend half an hour for a match to start, just to be trampled 500-10 by a superior team.

> >

> > Wouldn't queue times go down because more people are playing?

> > Wouldn't the match making work better because there are more people playing?

> >

> > I remember there used to be heaps of players when Team Queue was an option that even HOTJOIN rooms had players.

>

> The problem with that is the assumption people would come back to play PvP. Currently, with balance and lack of maps, I don’t see people swarming back to play just because team queue is back.

 

We don't need people to come back, just need a reason for players in large groups to join the mists. Team queue would be a nice option because a guild can bring 5 players into the mists, 3 could be new and 2 of those new ones could like the PvP and stay. That's the effect of 1 guild within Guild Wars 2, mathematically speaking this should be healthy option for PvP wouldn't it?

 

After players start coming to the mists, it could be made more enticing by introducing a Team Deathmatch option, I'm sure this would bring in quite a bit of WvW havok guilds, which again leads to more players.

 

A tiny change now could have a huge effect in 6 months time.

[ReaverKane.7598]

> @"Jace al Thor.6745" said:

> > @"sephiroth.4217" said:

> > > @"plushiesoda.8150" said:

> > > I'm starting to hope that they bring back team queue... just to see the same pro-team-queuing-advocates complain about having to spend half an hour for a match to start, just to be trampled 500-10 by a superior team.

> >

> > Wouldn't queue times go down because more people are playing?

> > Wouldn't the match making work better because there are more people playing?

> >

> > I remember there used to be heaps of players when Team Queue was an option that even HOTJOIN rooms had players.

>

> The problem with that is the assumption people would come back to play PvP. Currently, with balance and lack of maps, I don’t see people swarming back to play just because team queue is back.

 

If i could play with my friends i'd play more PvP. Well, assuming i'd be able to get them abck to playing gw2 after most quit **after team queue was removed**..

> @"Ragion.2831" said:

> There was a vote, community voted overwhelmingly against it.

A vote made without all the facts, based on personal frustration and lack of foresight. Everyone that voted against it predicted what happened. (Loss of players, end of the professional competitive part, etc.)

You can't argue for a team-based game being competitive without allowing teams to participate. It's simply nonsensical. And it's one of those cases where the game developer should know better. Or at least give people the stats, like they did now when people were clamouring for the end of duo queue.

Because that's the trademark of the majority of people playing PvP. The majority are silver or lower skilled, but all think they're Legendary level players, and tema queues are always the best excuse for their defeat. It's always because the other team had a duo, not because they just suck.

 

That's what happened with the community vote. And that's what will always be happening. sadly Arena Net chose the worse possible area to vent community frustrations, and killed PvP. Sadly, it's dead, and i very much doubt there's any way to fix it.

Adding 5 man queues will cause an initial surge of poeple stopping to play because they're the ones that think team pvp is the devil, and honestly those are the ones still playing. Everyone that actually wants a competitive team pvp game is playing Overwatch, Paladins, LoL or other games like that. Heck even BDO at this point is probably better for PvP.

[Crab Fear.1624]

I feel like it will be back when they had teams. I was on a team that had a duo, and we faced a five man. Wiped. Sounds fun.

[Ragion.2831]

> @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

> > @"Jace al Thor.6745" said:

> > > @"sephiroth.4217" said:

> > > > @"plushiesoda.8150" said:

> > > > I'm starting to hope that they bring back team queue... just to see the same pro-team-queuing-advocates complain about having to spend half an hour for a match to start, just to be trampled 500-10 by a superior team.

> > >

> > > Wouldn't queue times go down because more people are playing?

> > > Wouldn't the match making work better because there are more people playing?

> > >

> > > I remember there used to be heaps of players when Team Queue was an option that even HOTJOIN rooms had players.

> >

> > The problem with that is the assumption people would come back to play PvP. Currently, with balance and lack of maps, I don’t see people swarming back to play just because team queue is back.

>

> If i could play with my friends i'd play more PvP. Well, assuming i'd be able to get them abck to playing gw2 after most quit **after team queue was removed**..

> > @"Ragion.2831" said:

> > There was a vote, community voted overwhelmingly against it.

> A vote made without all the facts, based on personal frustration and lack of foresight. Everyone that voted against it predicted what happened. (Loss of players, end of the professional competitive part, etc.)

This is wrong. It rendered all your other points moot. For quite a long time people complained about 5 man premades oppressing solo q players because they were generally more organised. Anet tried to match premade teams against premade teams but that didnt work out

 

Killing 5 man premade was not something that happened over night. It had been around for some time so community had enough time to form an opinion about it. There were many many threads against them and an abundance of screenshots showing premades generally beat non premade teams.

 

Eventually Anet held a vote and there was a final debate. The hate for premades was so much that before the vote was done it was obvious 5 man premades was dead. If i remember correctly the vote passed to get it removed 70-30.

 

The loss of players has nothing to do with premades. Its because of balance, static meta and out of control combat. The only thing that can cause a surge in new players at this point is an expansion. Other than that a rise in population will only happen if things come back under control and people have more builds they can use without dying in 2 seconds. But that will be over a long period of time.

 

ESL died because Gw2 is actually extremely boring to watch if you dont play the game. Nobody knows what is going on in the soup of animations. Even with animations being nerfed (Rip ele) it did not help. I'm sure there are other reasons but this was one of the big ones.

 

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Solo que defendants are saying two things to support their opinions, that happen to be in complete contradiction to each other:

 

1. "There weren't enough 5 man teams to support team ques."

 

3. "Solo que players were getting so tired of being frequently farmed by 5 man teams."

 

I just thought it was funny. I wanted to point that one out so everyone else could enjoy it.

 

 

 

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

I'd also like to point out all of this:

* https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/31915/cheaters-hackers-and-wintraders-and-yet-no-action-from-anet#latest

* https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/31977/do-people-use-alts-at-the-end-of-the-season-to-throw-games-to-protect-their-leaderboard-position#latest

* https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/31785/solving-wintrading-afk-manipulation-issues-thinktank#latest

* https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/31926/devs-please-fix-matching#latest

* https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/31444/high-plat-dcs-in-almost-every-match#latest

* https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/31165/ranked-should-only-be-5-vs-5-premades-but-gw2-lacks-a-proper-lfg#latest

* https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/30782/was-end-of-season-always-this-bad#latest

* https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/30899/sooooo-what-else-was-i-supposed-to-do-there#latest

 

That is just from the most recent 2 pages of this forum.

[Ioras Dagnir.3927]

I always find it funny how these arguments always dissolve into teams vs solo, especially with contradictions like that. People also bring up the poll. I didnt even get to vote and I do frequent the forums pretty often but thats not the case for all players, so we don't actually know how representative the poll was. But what I find amazing is that everytime Anet has made changes to PvP to appease the solo playerbase and make ranked more attractive with rewards they still drove away more and more of its population. Weird huh?

[Ragion.2831]

> @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

> Solo que defendants are saying two things to support their opinions, that happen to be in complete contradiction to each other:

>

> 1. "There weren't enough 5 man teams to support team ques."

>

> 3. "Solo que players were getting so tired of being frequently farmed by 5 man teams."

>

> I just thought it was funny. I wanted to point that one out so everyone else could enjoy it.

>

>

>

 

They dont contradict. If matchmaking cant find a 5 man premade to match your 5 man premade it would match against a 2 man or 3 man. Meaning you are going against some solos.

 

The 2 man premade would then complain that their solo teammates were bringing them down because they couldnt organise.

 

Matching against another 5 man caused queue time problems for everyone not just premades. People were already complaining about long queue times

 

So no, they werent exclusively separate problems.

[Ragion.2831]

> @"Ioras Dagnir.3927" said:

> I always find it funny how these arguments always dissolve into teams vs solo, especially with contradictions like that. People also bring up the poll. I didnt even get to vote and I do frequent the forums pretty often but thats not the case for all players, so we don't actually know how representative the poll was. But what I find amazing is that everytime Anet has made changes to PvP to appease the solo playerbase and make ranked more attractive with rewards they still drove away more and more of its population. Weird huh?

 

It isnt weird if you understood pvp and some of the things that happened a long time before the vote. ESL players got involved in the debate and they also generally believed premades had an advantage over solos

 

If you really did frequent the forums, you would have known about the vote because it happened over several days.

 

You would also not be surprised at the result because you would know that premade was doomed the moment it was open to a vote. The chaos that will ensue if it was brought back would kill pvp for good.

 

Saying the vote doesnt count because you didnt vote is kinda reaching a bit.

[Devilman.1532]

doesn't matter now as nothing can save this game mode at this point

[Ioras Dagnir.3927]

@"Ragion.2831" you didn't really understand a word I said.

Frequent doesn't mean I spend everyday here scrolling with my nose to the computer screen, it means I come here once in a while. I said the poll wasn't **representative** not **invalid** my reasoning being not every active player even uses the forums especially ones who have no issues with the state of the game and not because I personally didn't vote. Please I'm not so childish and obtuse, that is just insulting.

[Ioras Dagnir.3927]

I'm just saying given that the only people who were unhappy with the mixQ back then were the solo players and not the team players and I'm speaking about the general playerbase here not those who are active in the community, they were far more likely to be active on the forums, meaning their exposure to the poll would be much greater.

 

But that is not what I am here to argue about the whole thing is done and over. Moreover the result of the poll has fallen on its face, because even solo/duo hasn't stopped PvP becoming a much worse and toxic state over the seasons. And no it isn't weird I was being facetious, once you remove the competitive elements the quality of matches was destined to deteriorate

[Exalted Quality.8534]

When are all the annoying solo/duoQ supporters going to realize that this was actually meant to be a team game? Guess what? You should get stomped by a premade with more experience and coordination than you. The casualness of sPvP in this game irks me...If you want to keep it casual, then you shouldn’t expect to win every match. If you don’t want to put in the effort to find a team and get good, you shouldn’t expect to win every match. Conversely, if you choose to play this game at the highest level, you should be rewarded for your time and effort and you SHOULD expect to win every match! It didn’t surprise me that teamQs were overwhelmingly voted down because most of the people whining about it on forums don’t even PvP regularly (my legendary wings collection will take me more than ONE SEASON?? T_____T). Blame ANET for putting dumb PvE rewards in PvP (armor boxes blah blah blah).

 

That being said, I’m willing to bet that most of the people crying about solo/duoQ now didn’t take time to vote in the poll that ultimately ended teams. Those people have no business complaining now.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

> @"Ragion.2831" said:

> > @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

> > Solo que defendants are saying two things to support their opinions, that happen to be in complete contradiction to each other:

> >

> > 1. "There weren't enough 5 man teams to support team ques."

> >

> > 3. "Solo que players were getting so tired of being frequently farmed by 5 man teams."

> >

> > I just thought it was funny. I wanted to point that one out so everyone else could enjoy it.

> >

> >

> >

>

> They dont contradict. If matchmaking cant find a 5 man premade to match your 5 man premade it would match against a 2 man or 3 man. Meaning you are going against some solos.

>

> The 2 man premade would then complain that their solo teammates were bringing them down because they couldnt organise.

>

> Matching against another 5 man caused queue time problems for everyone not just premades. People were already complaining about long queue times

>

> So no, they werent exclusively separate problems.

 

1. The two statements definitely contradict each other.

2. This response in no logical way explained anything evident to show that they do not contradict.

3. No, they are not separate problems. They are two claims being made vs. the same topic at hand, that exposes ignorant blind opinion. This means that one of those claims is a fabricated lie. Either 5 man teams had become so scarce that this enormous solo que demographic that I keep hearing about would have rarely been running in to them, or there were enough 5 man teams that this enormous solo que demographic who complained about them would have been running in to them fairly regularly for it to have ever been a problem to begin with. Trying to state that these are separate problems doesn't make any sense when both statements are in reference to the size of the demographic of players who were, want to, and will participate in 5 man team play and why players do or don't want it to return. Furthermore, they cannot be two separate real problems because one of those statements never happened to begin with.

 

I don't know, maybe it's time to back up cross examine some points of view here.

[ReaverKane.7598]

> @"Ioras Dagnir.3927" said:

> I always find it funny how these arguments always dissolve into teams vs solo, especially with contradictions like that. People also bring up the poll. I didnt even get to vote and I do frequent the forums pretty often but thats not the case for all players, so we don't actually know how representative the poll was. But what I find amazing is that everytime Anet has made changes to PvP to appease the solo playerbase and make ranked more attractive with rewards they still drove away more and more of its population. Weird huh?

 

Well, if we're being honest, the only reason for this is that they wanted to "bribe" players into playing PvP, so they made PvP an extension of PvE with all the rewards and items being easier to get in PvP than PvE.

That made that players were (and are) playing for the farm, not the competitive aspect (which would be core to PvP) so they got frustrated when pvp-minded teams would trounce them in their PvE extended farms, and they started whining.

And Arena Net at the time was trying too hard on PvP, ended up making a poor decision of going by popular vote instead of their own minds, and messed it up. It also strikes me as honestly ridiculous that when people demanded the same thing now they actually gave us stats on winrates of duo vs solo teams, which they didn't when that vote came out. People voted without actual information, towards a development that anyone with ahlf a brain and any experience with other competitive games would have told them (and did) it would bounce back in a bad way. It did.

 

> @"Ragion.2831" said:

> > @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

> > Solo que defendants are saying two things to support their opinions, that happen to be in complete contradiction to each other:

> >

> > 1. "There weren't enough 5 man teams to support team ques."

> >

> > 3. "Solo que players were getting so tired of being frequently farmed by 5 man teams."

> >

> > I just thought it was funny. I wanted to point that one out so everyone else could enjoy it.

> >

> >

> >

>

> They dont contradict. If matchmaking cant find a 5 man premade to match your 5 man premade it would match against a 2 man or 3 man. Meaning you are going against some solos.

>

> The 2 man premade would then complain that their solo teammates were bringing them down because they couldnt organise.

>

> Matching against another 5 man caused queue time problems for everyone not just premades. People were already complaining about long queue times

>

> So no, they werent exclusively separate problems.

 

Look up "Flex queue for LoL". It's all about the matchmaking algorithm, and from my experience it was working just fine. I beat a lot of 5 man premades when playing solo/duo, got beat by entirely random teams while playing 5 man premade. If anything, my winrate is deviating more from the 50% now with solo queues and the toxic behaviours that came from it, and the lack of good matchmaking than it ever did when i'd play with a team.> @"Ragion.2831" said:

> > @"Ioras Dagnir.3927" said:

> > I always find it funny how these arguments always dissolve into teams vs solo, especially with contradictions like that. People also bring up the poll. I didnt even get to vote and I do frequent the forums pretty often but thats not the case for all players, so we don't actually know how representative the poll was. But what I find amazing is that everytime Anet has made changes to PvP to appease the solo playerbase and make ranked more attractive with rewards they still drove away more and more of its population. Weird huh?

>

> It isnt weird if you understood pvp and some of the things that happened a long time before the vote. ESL players got involved in the debate and they also generally believed premades had an advantage over solos

>

> If you really did frequent the forums, you would have known about the vote because it happened over several days.

>

> You would also not be surprised at the result because you would know that premade was doomed the moment it was open to a vote. The chaos that will ensue if it was brought back would kill pvp for good.

>

> Saying the vote doesnt count because you didnt vote is kinda reaching a bit.

 

Vote shouldn't have been on the table. Of course people "hated" team queues. Because most pvp players aren't competitive pvp players, they're pve players farming pvp for rewards. You can't have a competitive team-based game without teams being the main focus of it.

If they had removed ranked rewards from being farmable as they are, moved them to Unranked and had ranked rewards be season by season with your final rank determining your reward, and kept ranked queues, ranked would lose all the chaff of PvE farmers and keep the actual PvP players that kept the game-mode healthy and thriving.

PvP started going downwind when they started adding Ranked season rewards and the legendary back. It's the same with WvW. When they added the legendary WvW back, WvW was always full but the matches were being crap because of so many people just interested in progressing the back piece, not on playing the game mode.

Removing the actual competitive aspects of PvP was just one of the final nails in the coffin (the other was their blind disregard for balance and keeping a strict once every 3 months balance patch, regardless of how FUBAR the balance was, and it was bad after HoT launched).

 

Any person defending the removal of ranked teams, is simply being blinded by their prejudice, and forgetting that the best period for PvP was before it became a farm. And the removal of teams from ranked was a response to the increased number of solo PvE players transitioning to PvP to farm it. Nothing more.

[Ragion.2831]

Welp i tried. I only jumped into this because its been some time since there was any real talk of 5 man coming back because most didnt want it around. Personally i dont care either way because 5 man premades arent always organised. Just a bunch of people who just partied up and dont have voice chat. Sometimes they do have voice chat which gives them an advantage over solos.

This game mode was built for organised play but they didnt implement voice chat (typical anet) Thats really what you should be asking about, not this thing that 70% of the community hates.

 

If VC was implemented so solo players can communicate properly there would be no issues with bringing back 5 man premade. 30% wanted premades though so consider yourselves as part of the 30%. Unfortunately 30% is not enough

[Ioras Dagnir.3927]


 

[Awe.1096]

> @"Exalted Quality.8534" said:

> When are all the annoying solo/duoQ supporters going to realize that this was actually meant to be a team game? Guess what? You should get stomped by a premade with more experience and coordination than you. The casualness of sPvP in this game irks me...If you want to keep it casual, then you shouldn’t expect to win every match. If you don’t want to put in the effort to find a team and get good, you shouldn’t expect to win every match. Conversely, if you choose to play this game at the highest level, you should be rewarded for your time and effort and you SHOULD expect to win every match! It didn’t surprise me that teamQs were overwhelmingly voted down because most of the people whining about it on forums don’t even PvP regularly (my legendary wings collection will take me more than ONE SEASON?? T_____T). Blame ANET for putting dumb PvE rewards in PvP (armor boxes blah blah blah).

>

> That being said, I’m willing to bet that most of the people crying about solo/duoQ now didn’t take time to vote in the poll that ultimately ended teams. Those people have no business complaining now.

 

As many people already said multiple times. This game has too low population in PvP to support mixed solos and premades in one pool. When you play things like LoL or Overwatch you dont get solo players matched vs premades like ever. Because the population is high enough that the system does not have any problem to find you a fairly balanced (at least in theory) opponents.

 

I dont know where the hell you got the "You should get stomped by a premade" thing. **No you should not** The goal for any game with a rating system is to match you vs players of equal skill and equal handicap. It does not matter if you are bronze or platinum. You should in both cases have a roughly 50% win ratio. That is what a rating system will try to achieve. If you are in a premade you should be matched vs other premades. If you are in a good premade, you should be matched vs good premades. Being in a team is a huge advantage so solo players should be left to play only against each other. They could probably allow premades to queue in ranked and disable the chance to be matched vs pubs, but then you would probably start posting about 10 minutes queue times and asking Arena to **omg fix this**

 

Right now we have off-season again. And since unranked uses different rating system (if any at all?) you have again a feast of matches where one team can hardly leave a spawning point. Today I was asking around on map chat about peoples ranks. I got all kind of responses ranging from bronze-3 to plat-2 (in same match). I also faced one 5-man and one 4-man premade (while playing solo). It's a total mess and I already can't wait for next season to start.

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

Back before mixed queue was removed Anet released statistics that said the majority of premade groups (3+) on average lost more than they won (obviously a top tier 1% group would win a majority, but they’re already winning in current queues as solos anyway so it makes little difference). Back in the old system you actually had better odds to win if you were single or duo against groups, regardless of people’s perception and confirmation biases.

 

Also the change to solo/duo killed pvp for me and my team. I know at least 15 people (including us) that have all pretty much stopped (95% reduction) playing pvp due to lack of mixed queue/team queue. ATs came far too late, on top of that aren’t a good replacement currently and even with changes won’t fill the void of being able to casually play with friends and be well rewarded for your time. My team transitioned to fractals/raids simply because we could play together there. It’s too bad because we all miss pvp, but in its current form it just isn’t viable for teamplay. Changing back to mixed/team queue would bring people like us back.

[ReaverKane.7598]

> @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:

> Back before mixed queue was removed Anet released statistics that said the majority of premade groups (3+) on average lost more than they won (obviously a top tier 1% group would win a majority, but they’re already winning in current queues as solos anyway so it makes little difference). Back in the old system you actually had better odds to win if you were single or duo against groups, regardless of people’s perception and confirmation biases.

>

> Also the change to solo/duo killed pvp for me and my team. I know at least 15 people (including us) that have all pretty much stopped (95% reduction) playing pvp due to lack of mixed queue/team queue. ATs came far too late, on top of that aren’t a good replacement currently and even with changes won’t fill the void of being able to casually play with friends and be well rewarded for your time. My team transitioned to fractals/raids simply because we could play together there. It’s too bad because we all miss pvp, but in its current form it just isn’t viable for teamplay. Changing back to mixed/team queue would bring people like us back.

 

Oh, i didn't know those statistics existed, but they pretty much confirm my experience then. I had better win rates with solo/duo than teams. The Algorithm was doing its job apparently.

This only makes Arena Net's choice more unjustifiable.

I had 8 guild mates that would regularly do PvP with me in guild teams (we'd rotate) and a few more that played less often. Of those 10-15 players, only ONE plays PvP regularly. It an't me either. I've not touched PvP once this last season.

 

The worse part, the part that really stings is that PvP was fun, was cool to play with friends, and a lot of my old mates actually quit the game entirely as well, and are now playing stuff like Warframe, Overwatch and LoL. And because of the damage done, the accumulation of errors, PvP is unlikely to ever bounce back.

[Awe.1096]

> @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

>

> Oh, i didn't know those statistics existed, but they pretty much confirm my experience then. I had better win rates with solo/duo than teams. The Algorithm was doing its job apparently.

> This only makes Arena Net's choice more unjustifiable.

> I had 8 guild mates that would regularly do PvP with me in guild teams (we'd rotate) and a few more that played less often. Of those 10-15 players, only ONE plays PvP regularly. It an't me either. I've not touched PvP once this last season.

>

> The worse part, the part that really stings is that PvP was fun, was cool to play with friends, and a lot of my old mates actually quit the game entirely as well, and are now playing stuff like Warframe, Overwatch and LoL. And because of the damage done, the accumulation of errors, PvP is unlikely to ever bounce back.

 

Good premade > Hey guys lets make a premade > pubs

 

I suspect that when you queue as a premade, system in the first place tries to match you vs another premade with similar average rating. When it fails, it expands a bit and puts you vs a premade with different skill level. If you are a "casual" premade, you end up stomped by some hardcore guys. But then when it even fails to find you another premade, it throws you some random pubs. Can pubs win with a premade? I guess thay can. But I think this mostly happens when a casual premade assembled on map chat gets pitted vs random solo guys from platinum rank. I sit in gold from 2-3 seasons and I never was above that. And from my own experience I can tell that 4 or 5 man premade thrown vs solos is a stomped game even before the gates open. I dont remember when was the last time I seen a game where all solos won vs a 4+ premade. Did I ever? I heard people claiming it happens, so as I described above, I suspect this may happen when all or most solos are platinum at least and they simply dominate all 1v1's during the match.

 

I understand that not being able to play ranked with a full premade is a bad thing. And I agree with that. But this is a necessary evil in a game where PvP population is mediocre in size at best. There are not enough people to keep the premade only queue busy. And if you keep feeding pubs to premades, pubs will leave sooner rather than later. And I am fairly certain that, as in any game, there are more pubs than hardcore and skilled PvP-ers (take a look at tournaments participation) and utlimately this is what matters more.