Should there be two BG queues?

weg0

Since the patch notes mentioned removing the ability to queue with a group for BGs I have seen many posts that mention a much better solution than completely removing the option to play Battle Grounds with friends...

MurderMostFoul

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

What about 3 man groups?

ChunkyCat

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

What about 3 man groups?

Find a fourth or play the Expert Mode >,>

WillhelmBlack

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

Absolutely

Kel

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

I don't think any reasonable person would be against two queues.

Beardimus

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

Surely this will be the first 100% poll.

Weesacs

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

/signed

MurderMostFoul

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

I'm not voting either way because the following idea is the best:

Maulkin wrote: »

Trio +1 random is strong enough to take on a Quartet (full premade). And solo players are fine mixing with duos.

This is both easier to implement than MMR and it will cause smaller fragmentation of the relatively small player base than proper MMR would cause.

Under this very simple system, you wouldn't even need to choose between separate queues in the menu. All folks joining would be auto sorted and all matches would be:

singles/duos v. singles/duos

or

single+trio/quartet v. single+trio/quartet

Elsonso

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

Yes, but the group queue needs to be always 4 players. No partial groups. MMR different for each one.

ChunkyCat

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

I'm not voting either way because the following idea is the best:

Maulkin wrote: »

Trio +1 random is strong enough to take on a Quartet (full premade). And solo players are fine mixing with duos.

This is both easier to implement than MMR and it will cause smaller fragmentation of the relatively small player base than proper MMR would cause.

Under this very simple system, you wouldn't even need to choose between separate queues in the menu. All folks joining would be auto sorted and all matches would be:

singles/duos v. singles/duos

or

single+trio/quartet v. single+trio/quartet

No.

The best idea is always the simplest one.

If you’re in a group, regardless of size (duo, trio, quartet) then you should get a group queue.

If you and your favorite butt buddy are dumb brave enough to accept queue with just a duo, going against possible 4 man groups, that’s on you two.

MurderMostFoul

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

ChunkyCat wrote: »

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

I'm not voting either way because the following idea is the best:

Maulkin wrote: »

Trio +1 random is strong enough to take on a Quartet (full premade). And solo players are fine mixing with duos.

This is both easier to implement than MMR and it will cause smaller fragmentation of the relatively small player base than proper MMR would cause.

Under this very simple system, you wouldn't even need to choose between separate queues in the menu. All folks joining would be auto sorted and all matches would be:

singles/duos v. singles/duos

or

single+trio/quartet v. single+trio/quartet

No.

The best idea is always the simplest one.

That's a violently short-sighted perspective.

However, the idea I posted would be very user-friendly and would provide full, fairly balanced matches for groups of all sizes.

You would queue for a BG just like we do currently (no new or additional choices in the UI) and one of the following would automatically happen depending on your group size:

Queue solo: you get placed in a match of all solo or 2-man group queuers, or you get added to a 3-man group and play against a 4-man group or a 3-man plus a solo.

2-man: your group gets placed in a match of all solo or 2-man group queuers.

3-man: your group gets a solo added to it and you play against a 4-man group or a 3-man plus a solo.

4-man: your group plays against a 4-man group or a 3-man plus a solo.

Elsonso

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

2-man: your group gets placed in a match of all solo or 2-man group queuers.

3-man: your group gets a solo added to it and you play against a 4-man group or a 3-man plus a solo.

4-man: your group plays against a 4-man group or a 3-man plus a solo.

No, don't mix groups or solo and groups into the same team. Just leave the group as-is.

MurderMostFoul

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

Elsonso wrote: »

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

2-man: your group gets placed in a match of all solo or 2-man group queuers.

3-man: your group gets a solo added to it and you play against a 4-man group or a 3-man plus a solo.

4-man: your group plays against a 4-man group or a 3-man plus a solo.

No, don't mix groups or solo and groups into the same team. Just leave the group as-is.

Why not accommodate 2 and 3 man groups?

TigressCreed

Leave only one queue that no longer allows friends/allies to group up and queue together

I think the MAIN reason there won’t be two queues is to avoid the AP farming that’s being reported ... could be wrong but some people like to whine others make their AP too easily in BGs if they’re always winning

weg0

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

TigressCreed wrote: »

I think the MAIN reason there won’t be two queues is to avoid the AP farming that’s being reported ... could be wrong but some people like to whine others make their AP too easily in BGs if they’re always winning

I guess I am just too dumb to see how someone could farm AP by being in a highly competitive group in a competitive arena... I mean isn't that just the point?... to win?

I saw someone mention on another thread that the problem with three premade groups battling it out was that each was composed of 2 heal bots and 2 tanky DDs. No one dies and no one wins. Well, that may be how some premade groups choose to set themselves up now if the majority of the time that strat trumps the unorganized opponent mashup they get pitted against, but if those same groups encountered eachother's similar strats more often than not, they would change it up in short order to try and get the upper hand.

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

I'm not voting either way because...

...you wouldn't even need to choose between separate queues in the menu. All folks joining would be auto sorted and all matches would be:

singles/duos v. singles/duos

or

single+trio/quartet v. single+trio/quartet

My poll was not meant to be taken as suggesting quite such a rigid dual queue system that the wording may suggest. What you are referring to is essentially two queues... I would totally be down with Maulkin's idea being how it gets implemented.

Araneae6537

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

I think one queue for solo/duo and another queue for fully formed groups would be ideal.

Elsonso

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

2-man: your group gets placed in a match of all solo or 2-man group queuers.

3-man: your group gets a solo added to it and you play against a 4-man group or a 3-man plus a solo.

4-man: your group plays against a 4-man group or a 3-man plus a solo.

No, don't mix groups or solo and groups into the same team. Just leave the group as-is.

Why not accommodate 2 and 3 man groups?

If that whole team is that group, and they want to go up against 4 person teams, then I guess that is what they want. I would not attempt to fill out their team by adding anyone.

My feeling is that if you make a group, that is who you want your team to be, so the game should leave it be.

To make it interesting for the other teams, I think that all groups should be 4 player groups.

MurderMostFoul

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

weg0 wrote: »

My poll was not meant to be taken as suggesting quite such a rigid dual queue system that the wording may suggest. What you are referring to is essentially two queues... I would totally be down with Maulkin's idea being how it gets implemented.

Sorry, I actually find poll nitpickers quite annoying, but this time I had to do it because I find Maulkin's old idea to be very compelling. But I've gone ahead and voted for what is the obvious choice between the two options you presented.

ecru

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

I'm not voting either way because the following idea is the best:

Maulkin wrote: »

Trio +1 random is strong enough to take on a Quartet (full premade). And solo players are fine mixing with duos.

This is both easier to implement than MMR and it will cause smaller fragmentation of the relatively small player base than proper MMR would cause.

Under this very simple system, you wouldn't even need to choose between separate queues in the menu. All folks joining would be auto sorted and all matches would be:

singles/duos v. singles/duos

or

single+trio/quartet v. single+trio/quartet

There aren't enough players for two separate queues. During midyear mayhem my random queues are 15 minutes. Splitting them up would only lead to longer queues. The entire system is busted because of both the third team and the group size being too small.

If it were 8v8, there could be one queue that allowed solo, duo, trios, and full 4 person premades into the same queue, all in the same BG. Even full premades queueing would get an instant queue as long as there were 8 solo queuers because you could match quartet+4 solos vs quartet+4 solos.

The entire system should be scrapped for a normal two team system with larger teams like literally every mmo in existence and all of these matchmaking issues would basically vanish overnight with a basic win/loss ELO system. There is very little middle ground with a team size of 4 even with three teams because even one or two individual players can make or break a team, leaving almost no room for error with matchmaking. Even a strong duo makes a huge difference when the team size is only 4. If a game is 8v8, one or two players aren't going to make that big of a difference, but with 4 people that could be half your team.

In Rift the absolute worst situation you could have with matchmaking was for the game not fill up and end up 5v5 instead of 10v10 or 15v15. One team would almost always absolutely crush the other due to the presence of a healer or another strong player tilting the balance too much to one side. It was almost a guaranteed spawn camp with a game that small, and Rift's matchmaking was so good that they made ELO and winning percentage visible to everyone, with the vast, vast majority of people being within a few percent of a 50% win rate.

What exacerbates these balance issues with small teams is the lack of a role queue or assumed roles by players. I'm not suggesting a role queue should exist, but just pointing out that in other games (overwatch for example) there is a role queue, and even when there wasn't, players expected a fairly rigid group composition (tanks, heals, dps). This isn't expected in random instances in a MMO. In a MMO that isn't solely a pvp game you'll have people queueing with wildly different builds, some useful, some not so useful, and no way to guarantee you'll have any sort of heals in the first place, so the presence of a healer can make a tremendous difference, but with a group size of 4, what are the chances your team gets the healer? Now increase that team size to 8 instead of 4, and the chance you get a healer, or the chance that someone queues as heals will increase and the presence of a healer only on one side cannot imbalance an 8v8 match nearly as much as it could teams of 4. This is why MMOs differ from other types of games in how small you can have matches with randoms and still have any sort of semblance of balance.

MurderMostFoul

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

ecru wrote: »

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

I'm not voting either way because the following idea is the best:

Maulkin wrote: »

Trio +1 random is strong enough to take on a Quartet (full premade). And solo players are fine mixing with duos.

This is both easier to implement than MMR and it will cause smaller fragmentation of the relatively small player base than proper MMR would cause.

Under this very simple system, you wouldn't even need to choose between separate queues in the menu. All folks joining would be auto sorted and all matches would be:

singles/duos v. singles/duos

or

single+trio/quartet v. single+trio/quartet

There aren't enough players for two separate queues. During midyear mayhem my random queues are 15 minutes. Splitting them up would only lead to longer queues. The entire system is busted because of both the third team and the group size being too small.

If it were 8v8, there could be one queue that allowed solo, duo, trios, and full 4 person premades into the same queue, all in the same BG. Even full premades queueing would get an instant queue as long as there were 8 solo queuers because you could match quartet+4 solos vs quartet+4 solos.

The entire system should be scrapped for a normal two team system with larger teams like literally every mmo in existence and all of these matchmaking issues would basically vanish overnight with a basic win/loss ELO system. There is very little middle ground with a team size of 4 even with three teams because even one or two individual players can make or break a team, leaving almost no room for error with matchmaking. Even a strong duo makes a huge difference when the team size is only 4. If a game is 8v8, one or two players aren't going to make that big of a difference, but with 4 people that could be half your team.

In Rift the absolute worst situation you could have with matchmaking was for the game not fill up and end up 5v5 instead of 10v10 or 15v15. One team would almost always absolutely crush the other due to the presence of a healer or another strong player tilting the balance too much to one side. It was almost a guaranteed spawn camp with a game that small, and Rift's matchmaking was so good that they made ELO and winning percentage visible to everyone, with the vast, vast majority of people being within a few percent of a 50% win rate.

What exacerbates these balance issues with small teams is the lack of a role queue or assumed roles by players. I'm not suggesting a role queue should exist, but just pointing out that in other games (overwatch for example) there is a role queue, and even when there wasn't, players expected a fairly rigid group composition (tanks, heals, dps). This isn't expected in random instances in a MMO. In a MMO that isn't solely a pvp game you'll have people queueing with wildly different builds, some useful, some not so useful, and no way to guarantee you'll have any sort of heals in the first place, so the presence of a healer can make a tremendous difference, but with a group size of 4, what are the chances your team gets the healer? Now increase that team size to 8 instead of 4, and the chance you get a healer, or the chance that someone queues as heals will increase and the presence of a healer only on one side cannot imbalance an 8v8 match nearly as much as it could teams of 4. This is why MMOs differ from other types of games in how small you can have matches with randoms and still have any sort of semblance of balance.

I would expect that four man groups and three main groups would have long queues, while two main groups and solos would probably still get matched fairly quickly.

That would sort of be the price you pay for the luxury of having a pre-formed group.

weg0

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

ecru wrote: »

There aren't enough players for two separate queues. During midyear mayhem my random queues are 15 minutes. Splitting them up would only lead to longer queues. The entire system is busted because of both the third team and the group size being too small.

I don't really believe you were waiting for 15 minutes because they just couldn't find 11 other players to form the match.

Regardless, I won't totally disagree with your idea of completely changing up BGs, but your argument is a bit of a non-sequitur

Azurulia

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

This is a great idea in my opinion. However as some here have already stressed, the second queue would be strictly a 4 man group and cannot be queued for without a full party.

This "full party" queue would actually make for some very fun, hard fought games. Because each team would be organized to some degree.

As far as finding a fill for someone who drops? Don't. Players queing together more than likely either know each other or have at the very least played together a few times. if one drops out, it's likely due to a disconnect. In which case, "well, that sucks. We'll just have to see how we do without you and get you back in for next game."

I think this is solo and full party queue system is the golden ticket to resolve this issue for ZOS. I really hope they are listening to us right now.

Minyassa

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

Two, but not like what is written in the choices above. How about one default that is exactly like it's been all this time for people who either like to group, have a partial group, or are solo and just aren't bothered by being grouped against a premade, and then one opt-out solo queue for the people who hate the premades.

SshadowSscale

Provide two separate queues: one strictly pitting solo players against each other, one pitting only pre-formed groups.

Happy about solo que although I believe that there should be 2 seperate queues 1 for solo/due and one for 4 mans

Grimlok_S

Leave only one queue that no longer allows friends/allies to group up and queue together

I don't disagree that there should be 2 queues, but blocking their experiment won't improve the current system or solve its problems.

Ride it out for a patch.

darthgummibear_ESO

There needs to be an "other" option for people who would like them to make sure the existing system isn't completely broken before they start screwing around with it.

Commandment

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

I'm not voting either way because the following idea is the best:

Maulkin wrote: »

Trio +1 random is strong enough to take on a Quartet (full premade). And solo players are fine mixing with duos.

This is both easier to implement than MMR and it will cause smaller fragmentation of the relatively small player base than proper MMR would cause.

Under this very simple system, you wouldn't even need to choose between separate queues in the menu. All folks joining would be auto sorted and all matches would be:

singles/duos v. singles/duos

or

single+trio/quartet v. single+trio/quartet

Won't work because the guy who joined the 3man team will lose and still complain about premade groups. There is no winning.

Rampeal

Leave only one queue that no longer allows friends/allies to group up and queue together

This would not last long. You will have the teams used to stomping randoms on here crying to change it back when their premades get stomped by skilled teams.

There is no winning. Personally the Real PvPers are in Cyrodil anyways. BGs always seemed to be for the casual pvper

Comicman

Leave only one queue that no longer allows friends/allies to group up and queue together

I believe ZOS said this is more of a "testing" then the final state, it wouldn't make sense to add second queue for groups now. I think they want to see if this change will get more people to play BGs in general. If the population is healthy I can see them adding premade queue in the future, even though personally I would rather see them add some kind of rated arena for premade where it is only 1 team vs 1 team.

stevenyaub16_ESO

I vote neither. There should be two queues but one competitive and one not. So try hard groups can play somewhere they can get progression in (ranking/titles/skin/costume).

But neither queues should limit you from grouping in. There's alot of "casual' players who group up for PvP because it's more fun or they are really bad and need help. Solo only is just a bad thing for an MMO where interaction should be encouraged not distanced from (look what happened from classic wow to now).

LinearParadox

Bold of any of you to assume there's enough players to fill two queues when there's barely enough to fill 1 outside of maybe primetime.