Impossible to escape gold.

[Cheremia]

I have reached Platinum and my queue is very dead now.

The amount of people I got not knowing how pvp works, unranked, etc, was astounding.

Way more than when the new pvp FIRST DROPPED. By far.
Two people not pulling their weight is impossible to carry no matter what anybody says.

I do not understand how you CAN carry people that just GO, die, GO, die, GO, die and don't really press any buttons on their way to the respawn timer.

The worst thing is that I do indeed spam "retreat and regroup" so people hear it (and I don't feel bad about it, I want my team to win so i spam the useful advice) , but many just don't care and keep running in and dying and then we lose because "oh no the enemies are pushing, gotta PUSH the crystal"
The amount of people dying and then spamming "PUSH THE CRYSTAL" and people listening to THAt is amazing.
You are trying to tell them to run because enemies pushing with lb, that ONE person that keeps dying says to push the crystal and such they do and also die...

The groups being gold-gold-bronze-bronze-unranked is worse than having gold-silver-silver-bronze-bronze, because 2 silver people MOST likely know more than the one extra gold I had. And it was usually that i got the lower ranked team total than the enemies...

I am currently at work but I do have a handful of screenshots showing how bad people are this time around because it is definitely worse than before.

And now, in platinum, my queue is completely dead. Amazing!

And yesyes, i get it, i'm on crystal, so memeserver but crystal has good pvp people I remember and would smooch if i could. And will refuse to believe that pvp on other servers magically have better people so nobody is as bad as some people i got.

[Novani]

I'm reasonably sure a lot of the frustration of the current season is owed to the debuff cooldown tweaks more than anything. The sheer amount of readiness on some powerful debuffs now is just insane, despite seemingly small buffs and debuffs elsewhere across the board overall, the synergy is questionable in counterplay terms. If combined with a team that can perma-lock someone down the instant they appear, doesn't matter how good you are: you will die, repeatedly.

This is in fact made worse by the horrible and infamous netcode interaction making it difficult for some players to even do anything resembling healing or attack. So basically the ecosystem of PvP at the moment is suffering not because of a lack of competence, or willingness to learn/commit, but more likely due to functional changes that do not take into account how even these small adjustments may synergize in team orientated environments. It's not like we all forgot how to play in-between seasons at any rate.

And trust me, I get it. Nothing is more demoralizing than to basically waste entire days of your time just to make no progress. Losses wouldn't be so bad if there felt like there was anything to learn, but this season just feels... off, mechanically. Conversely at least it might be more Frontline friendly, but given the nature of that mode, it's anyone's guess. Overall feel these changes were made with duels in mind, not team fights.

[Osmond]

I have reached Platinum and my queue is very dead now.

The amount of people I got not knowing how pvp works, unranked, etc, was astounding.

Way more than when the new pvp FIRST DROPPED. By far.
Two people not pulling their weight is impossible to carry no matter what anybody says.

I do not understand how you CAN carry people that just GO, die, GO, die, GO, die and don't really press any buttons on their way to the respawn timer.

The worst thing is that I do indeed spam "retreat and regroup" so people hear it (and I don't feel bad about it, I want my team to win so i spam the useful advice) , but many just don't care and keep running in and dying and then we lose because "oh no the enemies are pushing, gotta PUSH the crystal"
The amount of people dying and then spamming "PUSH THE CRYSTAL" and people listening to THAt is amazing.
You are trying to tell them to run because enemies pushing with lb, that ONE person that keeps dying says to push the crystal and such they do and also die...

The groups being gold-gold-bronze-bronze-unranked is worse than having gold-silver-silver-bronze-bronze, because 2 silver people MOST likely know more than the one extra gold I had. And it was usually that i got the lower ranked team total than the enemies...

I am currently at work but I do have a handful of screenshots showing how bad people are this time around because it is definitely worse than before.

And now, in platinum, my queue is completely dead. Amazing!

And yesyes, i get it, i'm on crystal, so memeserver but crystal has good pvp people I remember and would smooch if i could. And will refuse to believe that pvp on other servers magically have better people so nobody is as bad as some people i got.

Well, that's interesting. If I see more responses like this then my idea is pretty much sound. That I said.......somewhat lol, that the ques is going to die above platinum because no one will deal with the demotions with 4 random ppl so they'll just stop at platinum. Demoting diamond and crystal isn't going to be a good feeling to anyone with randoms, but 1v1......that's a personal responsibility, encourage you to get better at the content. Yet, how can you do that with 5v5? It's impossible....

[Cheremia]

I know it is by no means primetime on crystal, but bronze/silver/gold queues popped in 5 minutes at this time, but platinum...



And it will not pop anytime soon, will check later again

[GordonGeeko]

And now, in platinum, my queue is completely dead. Amazing!

And yesyes, i get it, i'm on crystal, so memeserver but crystal has good pvp people I remember and would smooch if i could. And will refuse to believe that pvp on other servers magically have better people so nobody is as bad as some people i got.

I find that very hard to believe that your platinum queues are dead. There is a very large pool of players on Crystal. Would you mind showing to me those dead queues at reasonable hours (like between 5pm and 10pm PST) ?

I don't doubt that your queues didn't pop late last night. But at what time was that ? Your message was at 12:40 am PST, not exactly prime time. You won't even find a Frontlines game at that time usually.

Because yes, ranked PVP requires you to play at specific times. Always been this way, except at the beginning of S1 when the mode was new.

[Cheremia]

I find that very hard to believe that your platinum queues are dead. There is a very large pool of players on Crystal. Would you mind showing to me those dead queues at reasonable hours (like between 5pm and 10pm PST) ?

I don't doubt that your queues didn't pop late last night. But at what time was that ? Your message was at 12:40 am PST, not exactly prime time. You won't even find a Frontlines game at that time usually.

Because yes, ranked PVP requires you to play at specific times. Always been this way, except at the beginning of S1 when the mode was new.

Funny considering i usually do queues around this time and roulettes too!
Like okay, it might not be completely dead as I said, but by miles more dead than bronze-gold

Since, as i said, i legit did never have to wait 5 minutes to get ANY pvp queue pop before at this time i posted my queue, i'm not making this up, there's a lot going on in pvp at these times, too. The MOMENT i hit platinum, it went from 5 minutes to 30 minutes (and it never popped at any time, i might be unlucky).

I will check later, it might be because of savage and it might be more than usual because it is friday, but i will still check it!

[GordonGeeko]

Funny considering i usually do queues around this time and roulettes too!
Like okay, it might not be completely dead as I said, but by miles more dead than bronze-gold

Since, as i said, i legit did never have to wait 5 minutes to get ANY pvp queue pop before at this time i posted my queue, i'm not making this up, there's a lot going on in pvp at these times, too. The MOMENT i hit platinum, it went from 5 minutes to 30 minutes (and it never popped at any time, i might be unlucky).

I will check later, it might be because of savage and it might be more than usual because it is friday, but i will still check it!

Sure, let me know later today.

I have not played much Platinum games, I pretty much stopped for now when I reached platinum to focus on my island stuff (lol), so I can't confirm exactly what the matchmaking at platinum looks like. All I know for now is that it can match you with Gold and Diamond.

But considering that Gold could match you with Unranked, Bronze , Silver, other Gold and Platinum players and it's early in the season with a lot of people still trying to get out of lower ranks, I would expect Platinum games to not be as frequent as in Gold at this time. But not as frequent doesn't mean dead. With demotion from Crystal up to potentially Platinum, I would expect those queues to stay active at prime hours for a long time.

You're comparing matchmaking that could match you with people from 4 to 5 different tiers of players vs one that can match you with probably only 3 tiers. Where 2 of those 3 tiers of players need to go through Gold first, which not all of them can, as evidenced in this thread. Of course it will be slower, it's like a funnel.

[Cheremia]

Sure, let me know later today.

I have not played much Platinum games, I pretty much stopped for now when I reached platinum to focus on my island stuff (lol), so I can't confirm exactly what the matchmaking at platinum looks like. All I know for now is that it can match you with Gold and Diamond.

But considering that Gold could match you with Unranked, Bronze , Silver, other Gold and Platinum players and it's early in the season with a lot of people still trying to get out of lower ranks, I would expect Platinum games to not be as frequent as in Gold at this time. But not as frequent doesn't mean dead. With demotion from Crystal up to potentially Platinum, I would expect those queues to stay active at prime hours for a long time.

You're comparing matchmaking that could match you with people from 4 to 5 different tiers of players vs one that can match you with probably only 3 tiers. Where 2 of those 3 tiers of players need to go through Gold first, which not all of them can, as evidenced in this thread. Of course it will be slower, it's like a funnel.

Oh i'm aware of the funneling and everybody trying to squeeze through, so did I... it's... really bad down there.

You also only get matched with plat as gold if you're gold 1, at least it happened to me only then.

Current pvp queue was 5 minutes so maybe people got out of savage and weekend queue is when you go!
Does not change the fact that the lower queue is VERY alive VERY early and i really am not making that up lol

[GordonGeeko]

Oh i'm aware of the funneling and everybody trying to squeeze through, so did I... it's... really bad down there.

You also only get matched with plat as gold if you're gold 1, at least it happened to me only then.

Current pvp queue was 5 minutes so maybe people got out of savage and weekend queue is when you go!
Does not change the fact that the lower queue is VERY alive VERY early and i really am not making that up lol

Oh you are never going to get the low-rank fast queues at higher rank because you just have less players making it there. Just like there's more people playing casual games than ranked games, so you can get casual games at pretty much any time without waiting like more than a minute.

Even at Crystal Rank, in Season 1 you'd get ranked games at 9am PST, then at Season 2 it became 12PM PST.... and towards the end it started to be more like 3pm PST. That's more in line with how ranked PVP works in this game with the player base it has. It sucks if you're someone who is not available at night, because you pretty much can't play.

I'm not sure about Crystal DC, but on Primal or Aether, there is actually a PVP community that plays very late at night and you can sometimes get Crystal rank games until like 2am PST. But that's like what people call the "degen" hours. It's a small portion of the PVP community but it exists.

Edit: Come to think of it, I've seen Crystal rank Twitch streamers from Crystal DC having very late games as well. So it's all around on NA data centers.