Quote Originally Posted by Scintilla View Post
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While I can add my voice to highlight the issues from my experiences, I'm afraid I cannot really offer a solution. I would be sad to see FL team sizes reduced or for party queues to be stopped. That said, I don't feel that it would be good to leave things as they are currently.
Like you, I don't want to remove players' ability to queue with friends. Any reduction in playstyle options is a step back. Thus by far my preferred solution is to have separate queues for solo players and parties. The usual objection is that this would lengthen queue times. On Aether at least, this would not be an issue for the solo queue. I can see the party queue being more of an issue, but that's not entirely clear since it's hard to determine how many players currently queue with friends rather than an oppressive premade. SE, of course, does have that data.

Further, if there was a party queue, I'm convinced many current solo players would try it. Indeed it might even help Olivia's dream of having many skilled premades all following her guide and producing high-quality matches. I'd certainly attempt to form a semi-static and participate.

But then again, is this really what current premades want? Would they be happy moving from seal clubbing solo randos to testing their wits on a level playing field against other premades? That 55% win-rate is going to be hard to maintain. And sometimes you might even have to step back and let someone else command the team. Hmmm.