PvP Crystalline Conflict Duoqueue good idea?

[Iyrnwaen]

I think most/all the people I've talked to want to play with friends not because they want to roflstomp anyone in particular.

I think this is correct, and I was just being pointlessly dickish about it because this forum makes me cranky. I'd like to play CC with my wife and our friends; not because I want to wreck pugs, but simply because it would be fun to play together. I have strong feelings about the integrity of solo ranked, but the lack of any kind of group queue is damaging that integrity by forcing people who want to play together to try to manipulate solo queue into letting them do so.

The challenge is finding a solution that creates a fun match for both sides. Running into a full pre-made in a pug feels terrible, but so does waiting 20 minutes in a queue with 4 other people waiting for a fair match. Striking a perfect balance between queue times and match quality is an art form no one has mastered yet (though there's an understandable tendency to err on the side of faster queues since people are going to complain about the matchmaking no matter what, and the present state of CC is a perfect example).

All that being said, I like the idea of a duo match up or something where two people can join up together or something because if you have 2 pairs of 2 that means singles are never locked out which means the queues stay populated, and it means that that you're not splitting it off into like 3v3 2v2 etc.

I'm drawing most of my feelings about this from my MOBA background. I remember Heroes of the Storm in particular going through, like, a dozen different iterations trying to solve the group queue problem. The issue always ended up being that solo players won't voluntarily queue into group play as filler, which means you can't field 2+2+1 or 4+1 comps, and duos vastly outnumber trios, so trios get instant queues while duos wait forever. On top of that, 5-stacks have a massive advantage over the 3+2's, especially if we're assuming an MMR band that loosens as the queue time goes up (meaning the duo that's been waiting the longest gets the first trio that queues, regardless of how far apart they are in MMR).

Allowing groups of any size to queue into Casual is a start, but the result tends to be the sort of trashy Quick Match mode you'll find in lots of games. It's way better than nothing if you just want to play with your friends, but it doesn't end up being a particularly fulfilling experience long-term.

I've always felt like the best solution is in the realm of building out robust in-game tools for finding other players who are interested in group play - something substantially more intuitive and less cumbersome than the silly Fellowship Finder, certainly - and then incentivizing forming groups aggressively enough to override the tendency for most players to just tunnel solo queue instead of going to all the trouble.

[AzureChrysanthemum]

I'm drawing most of my feelings about this from my MOBA background. I remember Heroes of the Storm in particular going through, like, a dozen different iterations trying to solve the group queue problem. The issue always ended up being that solo players won't voluntarily queue into group play as filler, which means you can't field 2+2+1 or 4+1 comps, and duos vastly outnumber trios, so trios get instant queues while duos wait forever. On top of that, 5-stacks have a massive advantage over the 3+2's, especially if we're assuming an MMR band that loosens as the queue time goes up (meaning the duo that's been waiting the longest gets the first trio that queues, regardless of how far apart they are in MMR).

Allowing groups of any size to queue into Casual is a start, but the result tends to be the sort of trashy Quick Match mode you'll find in lots of games. It's way better than nothing if you just want to play with your friends, but it doesn't end up being a particularly fulfilling experience long-term.

I've always felt like the best solution is in the realm of building out robust in-game tools for finding other players who are interested in group play - something substantially more intuitive and less cumbersome than the silly Fellowship Finder, certainly - and then incentivizing forming groups aggressively enough to override the tendency for most players to just tunnel solo queue instead of going to all the trouble.

Heroes of the Storm was... special from what I remember of playing before I ragequit out. It had a lot of design that would benefit 5-stacks WAY more than it would benefit them in other games due to how the shared experience worked. I detest Summoner's Rift in League but I will play with friends if they have a full team together and honestly they seem to more or less have the matchmaking well in hand, although that could be due to the relative player population. And that's with League matches in general taking way longer and having way less comeback potential. I think you can manage being a bit more loose in initial experiments with matchmaking for CC, the matches are so short that especially in quick play it's not going to be as big of an emotional investment as knowing you're going to lose 5 minutes into a 20+ minute game. Even running some ranked I feel the sting of defeat way less than I would in other long-form MOBAs because I can just jump in and try again and I also know that my rank can't degrade past a certain point which is also nice. All that to say I think SE has some room, and very much SHOULD experiment a bit. It won't be perfect for a good while, but it's worth having because we should be able to play together with our friends in this mode.

[FoxyAreku]

Duo queue and full premade queue should definitely be a thing.

Or really just let parties of any size queue into casual matches. Because who cares-it's casual.

[BubblyBoar]

Premades queue for premades only once the mode is healthy enough. Don't need solo queue to match with premade groups at all, even in casuals. Anyone thinking otherwise is just looking for an advantage to stomp PUGs.



All these arguments were used before when premades were unrestricted. It just led to abuse and people gaming the system more than they are now. This is specifically why SE said solo queue only and premade queue later depending on how healthy the mode and queues are.



If you don't like it, blame those that abused the system before. It is their fault.