Disruptive Frontline Gameplay

[Mawlzy]

In addition, I don't rely upon a few Reddit threads (which I also follow) to see whether there are "oppressive premades" - people often whack ice in Shatter for the same reason that they say "let them fight" in any FL mode, and in many (not all) cases because they think BH doesn't apply in Shatter.

I'm not relying on Reddit threads. I'm basing my suggestions on my own experience playing the mode, the comments in FL chat, and what is to me the blindingly-obvious fact that queue mixing is unfair to solo players. There are plenty of other reasons that FL is less than ideal and that players get hacked off. This is one with an ostensibly simple fix.

FWIW a few days ago on Aether during peak times, one of these oppressive premades and a flurry of negative comments in chat "coincided" with the queue time suddenly shifting from its usual 2-3 minutes to 9+. On the DC on which I play, premades are a problem.

You're quite correct to ask if a twin-queue is something SQEX would contemplate. Do we have any evidence they might? Say, a "ranked" 8v8v8 party-queue FL, and a "casual" 24v24v24 solo queue? This is exactly the sort of approach SQEX takes to keep its casual players, who pay the bills, engaged, while giving the more ambitious ones some tougher content.

FWIW if an 8v8v8 party queue mode was introduced, I'd immediately seek out a pseudo-static to join. I suspect it would be a ton of fun.

[IDontPetLalas]

I'm not relying on Reddit threads. I'm basing my suggestions on my own experience playing the mode, the comments in FL chat, and what is to me the blindingly-obvious fact that queue mixing is unfair to solo players. There are plenty of other reasons that FL is less than ideal and that players get hacked off. This is one with an ostensibly simple fix.

FWIW a few days ago on Aether during peak times, one of these oppressive premades and a flurry of negative comments in chat "coincided" with the queue time suddenly shifting from its usual 2-3 minutes to 9+. On the DC on which I play, premades are a problem.

You're quite correct to ask if a twin-queue is something SQEX would contemplate. Do we have any evidence they might? Say, a "ranked" 8v8v8 party-queue FL, and a "casual" 24v24v24 solo queue? This is exactly the sort of approach SQEX takes to keep its casual players, who pay the bills, engaged, while giving the more ambitious ones some tougher content.

FWIW if an 8v8v8 party queue mode was introduced, I'd immediately seek out a pseudo-static to join. I suspect it would be a ton of fun.

Would Square implement an 8x8x8 premade queue? I have no way of knowing that, personally as long as queues were acceptable I would be fine with it. You have your experience of some queues lengthening due to some people avoiding a premade, I'm not going to dispute that, personally I haven't had it happen, it may or may not have happened to other people. I have no idea - I can only speak for my own experience- and I haven't had an issue with pre-mades. That does not mean that I haven't lost to one. Those comments in chat comments in chat if they see a premade? I wonder how many of them are useful, and how many of them are from people who don't really try - like someone who commented recently at the start that if they saw "x" premade they were just going to run. You know, even if the odds are that you (group "you") are likely going to lose, if you at least try, you can improve. But if you quit like that- you can't even give yourself the chance to improve or try to have some fun. I find that rather sad.