Ball Group Players "Group Queueing" into SOLO Queue Battlegrounds

Decimus

Hello!

I thought I'd make a forum post about this topic and hopefully get an official response on this sort of behaviour... without naming any names, recently there has been an epidemic of people who are known to be part of the same guild that play together in IC, Cyrodiil etc queueing into solo queue battlegrounds to just harass people they don't like as a group. This includes behaviours such as intentionally losing battlegrounds when certain people are in team, hard focusing a certain person in the battleground (often a random person new to PvP who winds up being stuck in spawn getting 4v1'd) etc.

This creates a pretty unfun experience where you're basically fighting a "premade" in an environment (solo queue) that is supposed to exist to prevent that from happening. Furthermore, on top of the obvious line about harassment (which I suppose is always subject to interpretation), there is a line on Terms of Service that seems to indicate that this is indeed unwanted behaviour:

5.2 In relation to online/competitive games, you will not exploit any bug, or abuse any game system (such as the scoring or award systems) in a ZeniMax game, Service, forum, or other games or services provided by ZeniMax. You will not intentionally use or share any bug found within any ZeniMax Game, real or fictitious, regardless of whether or not it grants an unfair advantage. You will not directly or indirectly communicate the existence of any such bug to any other user of the ZeniMax Service (in game or on a ZeniMax Service). Report bugs and exploits using the in-game portal or via help.elderscrollsonline.com. Unacceptable behaviors will also include any conduct that is considered by ZeniMax to be cheating (e.g. match fixing and collusion) or other unsportsmanlike conduct such as use of secondary accounts, intentionally losing and bribery.

...yet this rule seems to be rarely enforced given the prevalence of these incidents.


Is there any plans to address this issue @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin ?

My suggestion would be for the game to spread people who have been grouped in PvP in the past X days/weeks more into different lobbies if possible in case they synchronized queue - as it stands the whole idea behind "solo" queue as a place where you don't have to deal with ball groups etc is kind of being invalidated by this sort of behaviour.

Four_Fingers

So, you are saying that people who are friends and know each other shouldn't be allowed to solo queue?
Good luck with that in an MMO.

Decimus

Four_Fingers wrote: »

So, you are saying that people who are friends and know each other shouldn't be allowed to solo queue?
Good luck with that in an MMO.

No, I'm saying people who play grouped together in Cyrodiil/IC shouldn't be able to abuse the system to go harass unorganized solo queuers in solo queue BGs - there is a group queue for their desired gameplay format.

Heren

I'm curious, did they (ab)use something in particular in order to get in solo bg as a group ? Or did they just massively tag as solo players in order to maximize the chances to get together in a bg ?

If it's the later, I guess you can only denounce the behaviour inside the bg rather than the intent of maximizing chances to get inside as a group, but hey, I'm not the judge here. Anyway, intentionaly losing is clearly mentionned as a reprehensible behaviour in the text you quoted, should be enough. Theoretically.

Pepegrillos

I'd like to think that a concerted and repeated effort to sabotage the game (be it dungeons, bgs, or whatever) is a punishable offense. It is in other MMORPGs at least.

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom

This doesn't surprise me. It's a known fact that these types of players can't play solo and need to do everything they can to group together and exploit as many game mechanics as possible (e.g. 12 echoing vigor at once). If they can't play in their safety net for whatever reason, they're basically useless other than being placed in a meatbag and thrown over the keep wall.

Icy_Waffles

What exactly is being exploited here?

Two things come to mind.

1. When you solo enough you begin to recognize others and sometimes all it takes is two players with similar experience to feel well coordinated.
2. When a guild all solos into solo battlegrounds- it’s absolute mayhem, sometimes they can be grouped, sometimes you never see a guildie, and other times it’s a lot of fun when you are against guildies.

I don’t think there’s any exploit here

Thumbless_Bot

Icy_Waffles wrote: »

What exactly is being exploited here?

Two things come to mind.

1. When you solo enough you begin to recognize others and sometimes all it takes is two players with similar experience to feel well coordinated.
2. When a guild all solos into solo battlegrounds- it’s absolute mayhem, sometimes they can be grouped, sometimes you never see a guildie, and other times it’s a lot of fun when you are against guildies.

I don’t think there’s any exploit here

Intentionally throwing matches is not an exploit, maybe, but against tos for sure. It’s a semantics argument on it being an exploit. to, say, hard focus one person at spawn, is maybe not an exploit either. but certainly not fun or fair. When you combine the two it becomes insidious.

Video evidence, along with harsh punishment for those engaging in these shenanigans is the only way to mitigate this garbage if it's happening.

valenwood_vegan

If there is some sort of violation occurring, perhaps report the involved players using the proper systems and providing as many details as possible, or video evidence if possible.

I mean, I don't see how zos could possibly even act on the information provided here.

Not trying to discount the concerns that have been raised; I personally find bg's to be a pretty poor experience. There have been numerous complaints brought up about the matchmaking, scoring, MMR, etc., but thus far zos has not demonstrated much interest in working on these issues and there is not another major update until at least June most likely... so for now at least, reporting individual bad behavior might be the only way to get anything addressed.

Elvenheart

I think video evidence is key, you could figure out how to video yourself playing, and record every BG you play. If Murphy’s Law kicks in, you won’t see any of those people ever again, but if you’re lucky, you might be able to record some video evidence that you could use to get this type of stuff actioned by ZOS.

Decimus

Icy_Waffles wrote: »

What exactly is being exploited here?

Two things come to mind.

1. When you solo enough you begin to recognize others and sometimes all it takes is two players with similar experience to feel well coordinated.
2. When a guild all solos into solo battlegrounds- it’s absolute mayhem, sometimes they can be grouped, sometimes you never see a guildie, and other times it’s a lot of fun when you are against guildies.

I don’t think there’s any exploit here

Nothing is being exploited really, it is just the way the queue system works currently - people can synchronize their queues to get in the same solo queue lobby with their ball group friends and then just spend entire battlegrounds harassing people.

You can sometimes queue for BGs and see between 2-4 people from the same IC/Cyrodiil ball group in the same team in a solo queue lobby for multiple BGs in a row and if there's any in the opponent team those people will just work against their team essentially and ignore their friends.

Due to naming-and-shaming rules on the forums I cannot provide names, but it's pretty clear on PC EU to people who've been playing the game for a while and know the people involved.

To those saying I should get video evidence... there's plenty, from multiple days - and it's been forwarded to where it should be forwarded.


But this is one of the less covered areas of the Terms of Service and what is considered acceptable behaviour, hence the forum thread. `


I personally do not think that people should be abusing the queue system - if there's 4 people who play together and want to play together queueing, they should queue into the group 4v4 or 8v8 instead of the solo one... otherwise what is the point of the solo queue if it's indistinguishable from group queue should people desire to abuse it like that?

xylena_lazarow

I'm no fan of comp groups bullying randoms, but I see zero hard evidence of this. Sometimes they just randomly end up on the same team. If anything, I've been pleasantly surprised to see so many Cyro ball groupers solo in 8v8.

LordSkruff

Legit just remove usernames from PvP.

People complain about Tbagging,
It’s personal.

People complain about harassment,
It’s personal.

People complain about verbal abuse,
It’s personal.

Remove the personal aspect from PvP, Suddenly people are treated equally.

Decimus

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I'm no fan of comp groups bullying randoms, but I see zero hard evidence of this. Sometimes they just randomly end up on the same team. If anything, I've been pleasantly surprised to see so many Cyro ball groupers solo in 8v8.

Well for an example... I sent a video to Customer Support yesterday - between 3-4 people from a well-known ball group were queueing up at the same time for over an hour. They might not all get in the same team (or lobby), but very often it'd be 2-3 in one team on 50k health healers just trying to ruin the experience. This went on for little over an hour, after which not a single one of them would be found in any of the BG lobbies.

This is not ball group players queueing solo in 8v8 (which is not really a problem), it's people seeking to gain an advantage as a group by abusing the queue system.

Obviously I cannot name the people involved, but let's just say one of them even has a Youtube channel dedicated to uploading videos of him and others from this known EU ball group harassing streamers trying to do solo queue battlegrounds.



Except it's no longer one or two of them, it's up to 4 people queueing up to do this kind of stuff.

xylena_lazarow

@Decimus thanks, that makes more sense. Organized harassment has no place here or anywhere.

Pepegrillos

LordSkruff wrote: »

Legit just remove usernames from PvP.

People complain about Tbagging,
It’s personal.

People complain about harassment,
It’s personal.

People complain about verbal abuse,
It’s personal.

Remove the personal aspect from PvP, Suddenly people are treated equally.

You should make a separate topic pushing this idea. I think a lot of people would be in favour of it, me included. (Something like Albion Online "Mysterious Stranger" thing).

Pixiepumpkin

Been saying this for months. Blatant misuse of game mechanics to get an advantage over players who are in most cases running sub-optimal builds to start with.

I stopped running BG's because of this. Got tired of being called a conspiracy theorist and other rude names for simply pointing out the truth of what is going on.

Thank you for the post Decimus, it's nice to see someone who is notable in the pvp community calling this out (my mulitple reports were met with deaf ears).

moo_2021

LordSkruff wrote: »

Legit just remove usernames from PvP.

People complain about Tbagging,
It’s personal.

People complain about harassment,
It’s personal.

People complain about verbal abuse,
It’s personal.

Remove the personal aspect from PvP, Suddenly people are treated equally.

What about appearances?

Dragonnord

Pepegrillos wrote: »

People complain about Tbagging,
Ban the teabagger.

People complain about harassment,
Ban the harasser.

People complain about verbal abuse,
Ban the abuser.

Something like Albion Online

There, I fixed it for you.

Also, Albion Online is the second most toxic gaming community, right after LOL.

It's not right to defend teabaggers, harassers and abusers.
 

zaria

How do they know they got on the same team? Or is the low member group throwing the game, Say its 3 on one team and only you on the other so you stay at the base or charge the others to get the other to follow and then do nothing or just stupid stuff like spamming an useless buff.

tomofhyrule

This is and will always be a problem, and I think a lot of that comes from the illusion that "all players who queue solo are beginners and all players who queue in groups are full-sweat pros."

Yes, the sweaty pros group up. And then they find that their MMR is too high to get into groups since not many people queue in groups in the first place, so the only way that they can get into a game is by queueing solo. I had that problem before they even swapped to this new BG style, and I am by no means a PvPer, but since there are so few groups, you will sit in queue for ages. At least with a group all queueing solo, you will get in, and there's even a chance you can be on a team with your friends.

Yes, the solo players stick to solo queue. Why would they solo-queue into the group queue (even though the thing that kills a lot of matches is when there's one person to fill from the group queue, so that never is found and the game ends)? But not everyone who solo-queues is a beginner, and a lot of people just want to play with their friends without having to just sit in queue for hours to get curbstomped.

That's honestly why I think the separation between Solo and Group queues are a mistake. Yes, nobody wants to be a beginner zerg against a premade, but that's the point of MMR in the first place (assuming it worked properly, which is a different issue). If the hypersweats all only queue as a 4-man premade, then they'll have the highest MMR and not face too many beginners. But that allows people who just want to get into a BG with their partner to be able to get in with people at their skill level. There are 'premades' where it's just a handful of duos and no other coordination and 'completely solo players' who all queued at the same time so they could end up in the same match.

Honestly, I think to keep BGs active, they may need to dispense with the pretense and just make one BG queue regardless of group size. I remember before they started fiddling with BG queues that we were able to go in as groups and as solos, and we could always get a match. But then we lost the game mode select and they went DM only and then they brought the other modes back and split the queue, and BGs have never been the same since.

Decimus

tomofhyrule wrote: »

This is and will always be a problem, and I think a lot of that comes from the illusion that "all players who queue solo are beginners and all players who queue in groups are full-sweat pros."

Yes, the sweaty pros group up. And then they find that their MMR is too high to get into groups since not many people queue in groups in the first place, so the only way that they can get into a game is by queueing solo. I had that problem before they even swapped to this new BG style, and I am by no means a PvPer, but since there are so few groups, you will sit in queue for ages. At least with a group all queueing solo, you will get in, and there's even a chance you can be on a team with your friends.

Yes, the solo players stick to solo queue. Why would they solo-queue into the group queue (even though the thing that kills a lot of matches is when there's one person to fill from the group queue, so that never is found and the game ends)? But not everyone who solo-queues is a beginner, and a lot of people just want to play with their friends without having to just sit in queue for hours to get curbstomped.

That's honestly why I think the separation between Solo and Group queues are a mistake. Yes, nobody wants to be a beginner zerg against a premade, but that's the point of MMR in the first place (assuming it worked properly, which is a different issue). If the hypersweats all only queue as a 4-man premade, then they'll have the highest MMR and not face too many beginners. But that allows people who just want to get into a BG with their partner to be able to get in with people at their skill level. There are 'premades' where it's just a handful of duos and no other coordination and 'completely solo players' who all queued at the same time so they could end up in the same match.

Honestly, I think to keep BGs active, they may need to dispense with the pretense and just make one BG queue regardless of group size. I remember before they started fiddling with BG queues that we were able to go in as groups and as solos, and we could always get a match. But then we lost the game mode select and they went DM only and then they brought the other modes back and split the queue, and BGs have never been the same since.

Can't really agree with this "solution".

The reason solo queue is separate from group is because no solo player (majority of BG player base) liked fighting against organized groups back when the queues were combined (yes, there were no separate group and solo queue back in 2017)... and this was before premade groups were power crept by the inclusion of countless new buff sets over the years.

And by no means should the "highest MMR" automatically go to the people who queue in as an organized group... skill wise you could be twice the player anyone in a group like that is, yet be lower MMR because you prefer queueing solo/don't have an organized group? I think you're under the assumption that all the "hypersweats" like playing in a ball group.

Solo queue BGs are what are supposed to be a respite from fighting the buff sets/crossheals stacking ball groups, an area where individual skill (both gameplay and theorycrafting) matters a bit more than running in an optimized group comp... not another 3 2 1 ultidump simulator with mandatory voice comms and people picking from X Y Z buff sets that others in the group aren't running yet.

If more people preferred the alternative, they'd be forming groups and queueing into the group queue... yet it's only very few people doing so in comparison to solo queue because that gameplay is dreadfully boring and individually limiting.

But of course people are trying to find workarounds to this and force their way into solo queue with their ball group friends, which defeats the entire purpose of that solo queue.

jle30303

I would suggest the following:

Get rid of MMR in the Solo queue. Total random queuing.

All players in a Solo-queue Battleground are completely anonymous to each other. Player nameplates are "Stormlord 1", "Firedrake 8", and so on. Even for your own team mates. Even if you queue at the same time, you *don't know* which ones on your team are your mates and which ones are not.

Only the scoreboard at the end announces who is actually whom.

You get a total random selection - you might get some of the good players on your side, or you might be saddled with being the only good player in a team of potatoes. But you have no clue who's on the opposition side and it's hard enough to find out who's on your side, let alone theirs.

Having the ranking system, makes the ranking system gameable.

Pixiepumpkin

zaria wrote: »

How do they know they got on the same team? Or is the low member group throwing the game, Say its 3 on one team and only you on the other so you stay at the base or charge the others to get the other to follow and then do nothing or just stupid stuff like spamming an useless buff.

I have seen this.
I always F5 on PC to check who is on the other team. I noticed over time the same people queuing over and over, often the same people on the other team (or the team I am on).

When they are on the other team, we get base camped/seal clubbed.
When I am on their team, we base camp/club seals.

Its PVP guilds/groups of friends queuing together, often in comms as a "Team" in the solo queue.

The ones/one who does not get into the same BG as the other will often just stay hidden or pick of stragglers.

I have seen "PVP heros/sweat lords" rack up 30+ kills with their group and dominate the BG. Then I will see them 7 matches later in the team I am in doing nothing. Running around, low score, low kills (and low to no deaths, meaning they are not engaging). Why? Because they got matched into the team opposite of their friends.

So, not only does the enemy team have a partial premade, one of their own members is on your team telling their friends where the ball is, where the stealthies are and basically throwing the match.

Major_Toughness

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

How do they know they got on the same team? Or is the low member group throwing the game, Say its 3 on one team and only you on the other so you stay at the base or charge the others to get the other to follow and then do nothing or just stupid stuff like spamming an useless buff.

I have seen this.
I always F5 on PC to check who is on the other team. I noticed over time the same people queuing over and over, often the same people on the other team (or the team I am on).

When they are on the other team, we get base camped/seal clubbed.
When I am on their team, we base camp/club seals.

Its PVP guilds/groups of friends queuing together, often in comms as a "Team" in the solo queue.

The ones/one who does not get into the same BG as the other will often just stay hidden or pick of stragglers.

I have seen "PVP heros/sweat lords" rack up 30+ kills with their group and dominate the BG. Then I will see them 7 matches later in the team I am in doing nothing. Running around, low score, low kills (and low to no deaths, meaning they are not engaging). Why? Because they got matched into the team opposite of their friends.

So, not only does the enemy team have a partial premade, one of their own members is on your team telling their friends where the ball is, where the stealthies are and basically throwing the match.

I assume you have some bulletproof evidence to back up accusing players highlighting to an opposing team player where stealthed players are on their team?

Pixiepumpkin

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

How do they know they got on the same team? Or is the low member group throwing the game, Say its 3 on one team and only you on the other so you stay at the base or charge the others to get the other to follow and then do nothing or just stupid stuff like spamming an useless buff.

I have seen this.
I always F5 on PC to check who is on the other team. I noticed over time the same people queuing over and over, often the same people on the other team (or the team I am on).

When they are on the other team, we get base camped/seal clubbed.
When I am on their team, we base camp/club seals.

Its PVP guilds/groups of friends queuing together, often in comms as a "Team" in the solo queue.

The ones/one who does not get into the same BG as the other will often just stay hidden or pick of stragglers.

I have seen "PVP heros/sweat lords" rack up 30+ kills with their group and dominate the BG. Then I will see them 7 matches later in the team I am in doing nothing. Running around, low score, low kills (and low to no deaths, meaning they are not engaging). Why? Because they got matched into the team opposite of their friends.

So, not only does the enemy team have a partial premade, one of their own members is on your team telling their friends where the ball is, where the stealthies are and basically throwing the match.

I assume you have some bulletproof evidence to back up accusing players highlighting to an opposing team player where stealthed players are on their team?

Yes.

twisttop138

Icy_Waffles wrote: »

What exactly is being exploited here?

Two things come to mind.

1. When you solo enough you begin to recognize others and sometimes all it takes is two players with similar experience to feel well coordinated.
2. When a guild all solos into solo battlegrounds- it’s absolute mayhem, sometimes they can be grouped, sometimes you never see a guildie, and other times it’s a lot of fun when you are against guildies.

I don’t think there’s any exploit here

#2 is something we were doing during mid year mayham. We are not at all pvp players, mostly trials and dungeons people with some solo questers etc. We were all in voice chat and the couple good pvp players were giving tips in chat. We were barely on the same team and sometimes on opposing teams. Sometimes no one at all would be in the same match. Is was fantastic fun, I couldn't recommend it more. Now, losing matches on purpose is not ok but how can that be proven. Even pro pvp sweats get out played and can't win them all.

Also it would be terrible if the game has to figure out who has been in a group in Cyro in the past however many days. When I go to Cyro I join whatever group invites me first. Now I get excluded? What if all the matches going on have people I zerged with? Now I can't play? Let's chill here. It sucks to lose, and to feel targeted. I'm sorry that happened to the Op. I don't think banning friends from being on the same team is the answer though. Correct me if I'm wrong though, as I said I'm not a pvp player, just a trials scrub. Just my opinions.

Nathanbreakfast

Grouped up ques rarely work. The only way to play with your friends is if you que up at the same time. Sometime you wind up playing against eachother. Either way it's fun. I Only play BGs and I have seen what your describing maybe twice, out of a thousand matches. The issue I run into more than anything are teams losing 500-0 because 5 of the 8 players are clearly unfamiliar with how to move, LOS and are dramatically unprepared PVE delve enjoyers who are praying they get lucky to get the daily bonus reward for being carried.

Grega

This has been occurring on Xbox NA. Coordinated PVP groups will systematically queue into solo queue, then coordinate their “match pop up” which will indicate they are in the same match (and on an off chance they are in the same match, but in opposing team, they will do what OP describes, intentionally loose).

This systematic coordinate match acceptance pop up abuse is possible due to several reasons, but most importantly due to:

A MMR system that does not work properly & lack of interest in the game mode (BG) resulting in such low population it reduces the actual pool of candidates to amount of a small village (like 25 people etc).

Stx

Wow has this same problem where players will sync queue into solo modes to stack teams and ruin the matches for anyone not in their voice group or guild.

Unless they are using 3rd party software there isn’t anything against the ToS about syncing queues but it does really ruin the experience for everyone else and honestly syncing queues could be considered an exploit. I doubt ZoS will do anything about it as Blizzard doesn’t even do anything.

Pixiepumpkin

...

Stx wrote: »

Wow has this same problem where players will sync queue into solo modes to stack teams and ruin the matches for anyone not in their voice group or guild.

Unless they are using 3rd party software there isn’t anything against the ToS about syncing queues but it does really ruin the experience for everyone else and honestly syncing queues could be considered an exploit. I doubt ZoS will do anything about it as Blizzard doesn’t even do anything.

It is a problem in wow and has been for 20 years, but the major difference is that wows BG's pool the people from other servers. The likelihood of running into the same premade more than once is almost nil.

In ESO, we see them game after game after game.