Group queue in ranked

[Xar.6279]

There's no group queue in ranked since season 4. And as we can see it slowly gets worse with every season.

AT's are fine but its not enough.

 

So how about some test season with group queue allowed?

And we would see if it worked or not.

PvP is already in a pretty bad place. So it won't destroy anything tbh. And who knows, maybe it will be better then?

[Alatar.7364]

Reading this makes me feel old, like witnessing the hopefulness of youth, its bright eyes and a big naive smile from one rose cheek to the other.

Don't get me wrong, I agree, but boy did we ask this so many times in the past.

[Crab Fear.1624]

The ones who have no interest in pvp can still vote, and they will keep it the solo/duo mess it is.

 

Team game with no teams allowed in the ranking mode.

 

Genius.

[Zagerus.8675]

I think the main issue with team queue is that when you force it the game-mode becomes more inaccessible to people who only wanna play a few games then hop out. Getting 5 people together, then hoping you guys have a good team comp ect ect ect. It just starts making what we have now the more appealing option. If you mix team queue with SoloQ then well.. I don't know how fun that would be for either side at this point in time. It wasn't fun getting stomped way back when xD

 

That said, I do think that a 1vs1vs1 team format would be amazing for team queuing. This would require new maps, new formats (king of the hill, object defense ect.) so that's probably a far off dream. But in a 1vs1vs1 format, even if you had a beastmode 5 man team vs 2 soloQ/mixed teams, you could do all kinds of cut-throating and it would give pro teams the challenge they crave while giving the soloQ/mixed players at least somewhat of a chance to win the game. But then.. yet another Pvp queue would fracture the PvP player-base even further. I think what we have is about as close to middle ground as you could ever get.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Look, the whole legend of "5 man teams win against mixed queues" is bologna.

 

It did used to be like that a loooooong time ago, before they added in flat average party MMR adjustment after much complaint. Nowadays, 5 man teams have a pretty hefty handicap when they queue with 5 people vs. say a team of a duo and 3 solos. Have you seriously never ran into a 5 man team on Unranked and just flattened them 500 to 100? This happens to me quite often actually. I rarely ever seen teams of 4 or 5 even win in Unranked, unless those teams are full of top 100 players, who actually know the game well enough and who use voice chat to be able to adequately make up for the flat average party MMR adjustment. Pretty much what happens now is the equivalent of:

 

* If you queue as a 1500 5 man team, it adjusts your match making so it's as if you are a 1600 or so team.

* Then you get put against a bunch of solo queues who are actually rated as 1600. Then you question if your 5 man comp is helping you or not.

 

You guys need to get over this idea that "5 man teams are such an advantage in a mixed queue system" for a few reasons:

 

* Firstly, what I've already explained about how hefty MMR adjustment was given to 5 man teams very shortly before they changed to solo/duo.

* Secondly, times were different back then. People used to fumble more over rotations and common in-game knowledge, meaning that 5 man teams casually in a discord together was a great advantage. But nowadays, good players get together and don't even use discord because they don't need it. These older players know the game so well, that it really isn't that much of a boon to have anymore, unless you're going to need it in the final round of an AT for some super sweaty try-hard next level communication for very very small benefits. I guess what I'm trying to say is that 5 man discord use at this point 8 years in, benefits new players MORE than it benefits veterans. So get it out of your heads that: "5 top 100 players in a team would be too stronk vs. a team of 1500s" because the truth is that: "5 1500 players in a team together on a discord, start playing like top 100 players, when they are against a team of top 100 players." <- This is very true and I see it happen almost each and every time I play an AT. I can get a team together of lesser known guys who get no attention, but they are capable of keeping up with reputable players when they are in a discord communicating. And this is because they stand to benefit much more through the use of discord, than the veterans do. So in this regard, getting new players to form 5 man teams or even a 3 or 4 man team, would actually help them a lot more than it would hurt them.

* Thirdly, I want to strongly stress that: **Being able to queue as a 5 man team is the only the only the only the only way to straight flat block yourself from the effects of win trading in your matches.** Yes, when you queue with 4 other people that you trust to not be throwing games, the win trading cannot effect you. No more losing games due to win trading. If you lose a game, it will be because you actually lost the game.

* And finally, no more having to tell Bob that: "Sorry man, I'm queueing with Joe right now." You can just play with all of your friends in the same team, and not worry about playing favorites with 1 preferred duo partner. <- This shit right here is ruining the community cohesion.

 

 

And INB4: "But it's not fair! I should be able to yolo if I want to yolo!" This point of view is ignorant, no offense. It is an illusion of fairness or balance that is not true. There is so much match manipulation anymore nowadays, that when you are yolo, it is as good as throwing dice. If you yolo advocates really knew how often you were against alt play that was throwing, and/or 5 people in discord against you who were spread out amongst each team, you'd understand the benefits behind being able to wield a 5 man team in your favor, rather than having it secretly wielded against you.

 

Hey, people form teams for every other #$%^ing thing is this game, dungeons, fractals, raids, wvw, even ATs. Yeah, the LFG is used all day long for ATs, and plenty of people use that feature might I add! So I really don't see why it is any different with ranked.

[Taygus.4571]

ranked should have team queues...and Im mainly a solo player. Its a team game, with no team play.... that doesn't make any sense at all.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

> @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

> And INB4: "But it's not fair! I should be able to yolo if I want to yolo!" This point of view is ignorant, no offense. It is an illusion of fairness or balance that is not true. There is so much match manipulation anymore nowadays, that when you are yolo, it is as good as throwing dice. If you yolo advocates really knew how often you were against alt play that was throwing, and/or 5 people in discord against you who were spread out amongst each team, you'd understand the benefits behind being able to wield a 5 man team in your favor, rather than having it secretly wielded against you.

 

As a yolo-queue advocate, i'd say one of the chief principles that governs my point of view is specifically **not wielding advantages like that.**

 

Metagaming has completely ruined the competitive side of this game for us, and I doubt anyone who wants to queue just for the sake of playing a few games solo(or yolo queue as you say) really cares about doing everything in their power outside the game to get a favorable match for themselves within, such as in this case; queue-sniping a mediocre party of 5.

 

When I yolo queue, I do so because I don't care and don't agree with getting hung up on queue-dodging, class-swapping, queue-sniping, etc. All the not so pretty ways that people go outside the game just to find an advantage within. Really, to yolo-queue is to just play for the sake of playing, and if that's considered ignorant or stupid then that speaks terribly for the game itself.

 

And u rite. It is objectively more harder and more of a dice-roll to queue that way. We do go out of our way to make the game harder for ourselves and we're hypocrites for that doing that. I don't mind tho, as I don't think I should be forced to find a team and/or Metagame for the least competition possible when all I want to do is play the game. Honestly, i'd be more inclined to use LFG and play in teams if teams were considered a serious option, but the forced inclusion of SoloQ players makes that impossible. It's contradictory to the YoloQ style of just playing for the sake of playing and testing yourself when you're going out of your way to get an advantage over other people playing the same game.

 

All that being said, TeamQ coming back is something i'm very in favor of, but I think the option to play in parties should be separate from the option to play SoloQ. If SoloQ players are somehow the problem everytime, then giving them an option to queue separately is only going to make both parties happier. The only reason I can see someone getting so bothered about a SoloQ player being able to queue solo completely disconnected from them, is because it conflicts with their agenda to ensure that they; as a "good" player, never get matched against other "good" players.

 

[Khalisto.5780]

Im ok with it as long as I dont be matched with them as a solo player

[Taygus.4571]

> @"Multicolorhipster.9751" said:

> > @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

> > And INB4: "But it's not fair! I should be able to yolo if I want to yolo!" This point of view is ignorant, no offense. It is an illusion of fairness or balance that is not true. There is so much match manipulation anymore nowadays, that when you are yolo, it is as good as throwing dice. If you yolo advocates really knew how often you were against alt play that was throwing, and/or 5 people in discord against you who were spread out amongst each team, you'd understand the benefits behind being able to wield a 5 man team in your favor, rather than having it secretly wielded against you.

>

> As a yolo-queue advocate, i'd say one of the chief principles that governs my point of view is specifically **not wielding advantages like that.**

>

> Metagaming has completely ruined the competitive side of this game for us, and I doubt anyone who wants to queue just for the sake of playing a few games solo(or yolo queue as you say) really cares about doing everything in their power outside the game to get a favorable match for themselves within, such as in this case; queue-sniping a mediocre party of 5.

>

> When I yolo queue, I do so because I don't care and don't agree with getting hung up on queue-dodging, class-swapping, queue-sniping, etc. All the not so pretty ways that people go outside the game just to find an advantage within. Really, to yolo-queue is to just play for the sake of playing, and if that's considered ignorant or stupid then that speaks terribly for the game itself.

>

> And u rite. It is objectively more harder and more of a dice-roll to queue that way. We do go out of our way to make the game harder for ourselves and we're hypocrites for that doing that. I don't mind tho, as I don't think I should be forced to find a team and/or Metagame for the least competition possible when all I want to do is play the game. Honestly, i'd be more inclined to use LFG and play in teams if teams were considered a serious option, but the forced inclusion of SoloQ players makes that impossible. It's contradictory to the YoloQ style of just playing for the sake of playing and testing yourself when you're going out of your way to get an advantage over other people playing the same game.

>

> All that being said, TeamQ coming back is something i'm very in favor of, but I think the option to play in parties should be separate from the option to play SoloQ. If SoloQ players are somehow the problem everytime, then giving them an option to queue separately is only going to make both parties happier. The only reason I can see someone getting so bothered about a SoloQ player being able to queue solo completely disconnected from them, is because it conflicts with their agenda to ensure that they; as a "good" player, never get matched against other "good" players.

>

 

How does this work..if one only has 3 in a party?.

 

mixing solo and team.. only seems bad.. until you think of how many groups won't be full parties anyway.

 

The population also isn't large enough to split them again.

 

I definitely think itd be worth allowing teams in ranked for a season and see what happens

[Zagerus.8675]

My thing is there is already an avenue to play on a 5 man, organized team. I'd be down to increase the frequency of tournaments, or even allow people to queue into "tournament" style matches even when the tournys aren't running. There is no question about it - having a 5 man organized team (maybe even on voice chat) go into a match with a refined comp against a fragmented team at best - I think the matches would be absolute disasters and quite frankly I think I would have more fun playing Unranked at that point. DuoQ is already enough of an advantage as is >

[Faux Play.6104]

> @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

> Look, the whole legend of "5 man teams win against mixed queues" is bologna.

>

> It did used to be like that a loooooong time ago, before they added in flat average party MMR adjustment after much complaint. Nowadays, 5 man teams have a pretty hefty handicap when they queue with 5 people vs. say a team of a duo and 3 solos. Have you seriously never ran into a 5 man team on Unranked and just flattened them 500 to 100? This happens to me quite often actually. I rarely ever seen teams of 4 or 5 even win in Unranked, unless those teams are full of top 100 players, who actually know the game well enough and who use voice chat to be able to adequately make up for the flat average party MMR adjustment. Pretty much what happens now is the equivalent of:

>

> * If you queue as a 1500 5 man team, it adjusts your match making so it's as if you are a 1600 or so team.

> * Then you get put against a bunch of solo queues who are actually rated as 1600. Then you question if your 5 man comp is helping you or not.

>

> You guys need to get over this idea that "5 man teams are such an advantage in a mixed queue system" for a few reasons:

>

> * Firstly, what I've already explained about how hefty MMR adjustment was given to 5 man teams very shortly before they changed to solo/duo.

> * Secondly, times were different back then. People used to fumble more over rotations and common in-game knowledge, meaning that 5 man teams casually in a discord together was a great advantage. But nowadays, good players get together and don't even use discord because they don't need it. These older players know the game so well, that it really isn't that much of a boon to have anymore, unless you're going to need it in the final round of an AT for some super sweaty try-hard next level communication for very very small benefits. I guess what I'm trying to say is that 5 man discord use at this point 8 years in, benefits new players MORE than it benefits veterans. So get it out of your heads that: "5 top 100 players in a team would be too stronk vs. a team of 1500s" because the truth is that: "5 1500 players in a team together on a discord, start playing like top 100 players, when they are against a team of top 100 players." <- This is very true and I see it happen almost each and every time I play an AT. I can get a team together of lesser known guys who get no attention, but they are capable of keeping up with reputable players when they are in a discord communicating. And this is because they stand to benefit much more through the use of discord, than the veterans do. So in this regard, getting new players to form 5 man teams or even a 3 or 4 man team, would actually help them a lot more than it would hurt them.

> * Thirdly, I want to strongly stress that: **Being able to queue as a 5 man team is the only the only the only the only way to straight flat block yourself from the effects of win trading in your matches.** Yes, when you queue with 4 other people that you trust to not be throwing games, the win trading cannot effect you. No more losing games due to win trading. If you lose a game, it will be because you actually lost the game.

> * And finally, no more having to tell Bob that: "Sorry man, I'm queueing with Joe right now." You can just play with all of your friends in the same team, and not worry about playing favorites with 1 preferred duo partner. <- This kitten right here is ruining the community cohesion.

>

>

> And INB4: "But it's not fair! I should be able to yolo if I want to yolo!" This point of view is ignorant, no offense. It is an illusion of fairness or balance that is not true. There is so much match manipulation anymore nowadays, that when you are yolo, it is as good as throwing dice. If you yolo advocates really knew how often you were against alt play that was throwing, and/or 5 people in discord against you who were spread out amongst each team, you'd understand the benefits behind being able to wield a 5 man team in your favor, rather than having it secretly wielded against you.

>

> Hey, people form teams for every other #$%^ing thing is this game, dungeons, fractals, raids, wvw, even ATs. Yeah, the LFG is used all day long for ATs, and plenty of people use that feature might I add! So I really don't see why it is any different with ranked.

 

Fact: it is way easier to manipulate your rating if you queue 5 man. The penalty for having a 5 man can easily be offset by having sand bagged alts on your team to lower the teams rating. Until they take steps to make a single rating per player (phone based 2 factor authentication) people will take advantage of alts with low ratings.

Fact: at high ratings and off hours queuing 5 man guarantees easy wins.

Fact: it is easy to boost lesser players with 5 man queuing vs. solos

Fact: manipulating the system makes ranking less accurate which in turn lowers match quality

 

5 man queue vs. random teams is way better for exploiters than for people who want to play the game legitimately. The best way to get accurate player rating which leads to better match quality is to have a level playing field. There are 3 things that will level the playing field and take out the exploits:

1) Eliminate separate ratings for alts. -- most obvious but if this is in play people won't be making low rank alts for sandbagging a duo's rating or flat out match throwing.

2) Two modes that count towards ratings: solo queue only & ATs. -- main reason is to get more accurate ratings at the top 10-20%. It is too easy to duck top players in a solo vs. team queue format. Counting ratings on ATs will compare top players when they play each other, and will also allow them to pick their own teams.

3) Upgrade the team queue. ATs aren't frequent enough, and there is little incentive for anyone that isn't a top tier player to play in it. -- there needs to be incentive for low rated players to do team play, and top players need to be playing most of their rated matches vs. people at their level vs. people 300-500 rating below them.

 

For the team queue format, I'd scrap the daily ATs and keep the monthly. To replace the dailies, I thought the best format I've seen was the halls format in GW1. It was a continuous bracket where the team that held halls kept playing the team that had fought through the bracket to get to them. This kept the teams that weren't that good playing each other in the early rounds, and it ensured that the top team had to play most of their matches vs. solid teams. Rewards increased based on the number of consecutive wins your team had, and the rewards were good enough that even people with lesser teams wanted to grind the game mode.

[Lottie.5370]

If you want to have team queue, it should be separate to the current ranked queue.

[Gamble.4580]

I want to fight vs teams to.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

> @"Taygus.4571" said:

> How does this work..if one only has 3 in a party?.

>

 

Parties of 3 can be matched with parties of 2. It's been like this in the past. The only party style that doesn't work parties of 4, but if you manage to get that many people in this game you may as well just hold out until you get a 5th anyway. Matchmaking for a full TeamQ is usually faster compared to a Duo, Trio, or Quad queue as well... as long as they aren't doing anything shady like smurfing.

 

> mixing solo and team.. only seems bad.. until you think of how many groups won't be full parties anyway.

>

 

Mixing Solos and Teams already happens. They aren't full teams, but if parties of 2 are already ruining the game through Metagaming and match manipulation. I think it's pretty safe to guess that if they were able to increase those party sizes to 3 or 5, the problem is only made 3 or 5 times worse. When you force those teams to play against other teams, match making becomes less tractable, and inherently more competitive.

 

If SoloQ is and still would be the most popular option; even if TeamQ came back, then why are they the ones always drawing the short stick and getting burned? It doesn't make sense. It's needs of the few coming before the needs of the many in that case.

 

> The population also isn't large enough to split them again.

>

 

And the population will never grow when that hypocritical self-perpetuating excuse keeps getting used by dev and player alike.

 

If you continue to mix Solos with teams, you only give those solos a terribly frustrating experience playing into constant metagaming and match manipulation against a handful of the same top players. I speak from experience. It is not fun at all, and it leaves you with only the options to quit or join the rest in a queue style that; mind you, requires at least 2 SoloQ players to be playing every game in order to even function. If you acknowledge that Solo is the most popular mode, asking the most popular queue-style to be punished, and then using the excuse that the population is too low is hypocritical because you're advocating concepts that are a drain on the most popular queue-style, and therefore the biggest pool of ranked's players.

 

I already made an entire post dedicated to this excuse and how self-destructive it is if you want to read further: [https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/88914/the-deadly-excuse-that-stops-spvp-from-evolving](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/88914/the-deadly-excuse-that-stops-spvp-from-evolving "https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/88914/the-deadly-excuse-that-stops-spvp-from-evolving")

 

It is inevitable at this rate that SoloQ players will leave, queue-times will go up, and everyone will get bored of fighting the same teams over and over again, or farming the same golds and silvers who do not care about ranked at all and only play to farm pips over and over again... If it isn't already like that anyway.

 

Or you could just throw us a bone by giving us our own ranked arena separate to yours, that doesn't affect you at all. ?