Please let us queue with our friends in CC

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

[...]Considering ranked is specifically for people who want to get sweaty, it should be only for PvP Teams.[...]

For YOU maybe. Not everyone shares your draconian idea that Ranked is best played with PvP teams only, for several reasons:

- Team vs Team PvP is incredibly easy to sync queues with and essentially win trade if done in moderation
- it is incredibly monotonous if you are playing against the same team over and over again
- the requirement of Teams is off-putting for people who want to give ranked a shot but can't because no team
- even if you have a team, you actually need to have all members present to even play (or a 5-man party in general if it isn't linked to the PVPteams system)
- queue times may end up horrendous due to above limitations / requirements, leaping right back where we were with Feast

[...]The matchmaking system will function quite a lot better when it's matching fixed 5-man teams against one another than individuals against other individuals, and you're a LOT more likely to develop relevant data for balance tweaking and design changes from formal 5v5 games than you are from randoms vs randoms.[...]

Obviously the matchmaking will be better because you literally eliminated matchmaking by pitting teams vs teams, so all the matchmaker will do is find teams in adjacent or same skill tiers and run with it. Yes the data will obviously serve very well to view things from highly coordinated games, but those are not ALL games to consider.

Solo ranked is frankly wasting time. But it's still better for getting actually fun games than casual is, unfortunately. A possible solution might be adding hidden MMR to casual games - that way teams will have at least some attempts towards balancing them.

Whether it is a waste of time or not is subjective, so I won't try to shift your view on this as I personally enjoy solo ranked. However I agree on the front that while it is what it is, improvments such as hidden MMR would certainly serve well.

[Gserpent]

Obviously the matchmaking will be better because you literally eliminated matchmaking by pitting teams vs teams, so all the matchmaker will do is find teams in adjacent or same skill tiers and run with it. Yes the data will obviously serve very well to view things from highly coordinated games, but those are not ALL games to consider.

Yes, they are. You design, balance, and tune competitive games around the best players, the highest level of play. Because they are the only players that fully understand the game and aren't going to be making a lot of gameplay or knowledge errors. For esports games like Starcraft, this is the pro scene - and if the pro scene is large enough, you only balance around the *best* of the pro scene (this would be like Code S, or ro8's or better in any tournament of 16+ players.)

If you balance around lesser players, you are going to destroy your game. You want to see proof of this in action? Look at Frontlines right now. *Most* (not all) of the complaints revolving around FL were straight up PEBKAC issues, not *actual* balance issues. Some of those that weren't PEBKAC issues were also not balance issues, but issues with the generally questionable map design in the older maps (not that Onsal is perfect, but it's a *lot* better than older ones.)

But SE threw out a quick patch to try and mollify the whiners, and as a result it's basically completely broken the game in the opposite direction. I suppose some people are enjoying the new system, but most folks I know and used to play with have been avoiding it and even I'm struggling to justify playing just a daily game for the XP bonus. Now, I think we can expect a more nuanced and detailed set of changes in 6.2, but it still proves that balancing/adjusting around lesser skilled players is a mistake.

If the issue is "not skilled enough," generally you need to leave that alone - it's not an actual problem.