5.3: You can now only queue as a solo player into Battlegrounds.

jaws343 · January 2020

mav1234 wrote: »

show previous quotes

mursie wrote: »

with solo que - you can intermingle low and high evenly across teams. you dont have to have only high face high. but this will now eliminate the significant economies of scale that do occur when multiple high MMR players ensure via duo, 3 man, or 4 man ques that they will dominate all opponents, including other high MMR ones.

if implemented correctly - i think you could have more population playing with matches seeing new faces constantly. each team getting 1 high mmr, 2 mid, 1 low... etc..

if this was true, when no premades were present, you should have seen lots of new faces. was that true? back in summerset (the last time I was decent at pvp), that was not the case for me. when premades were absent, it was always largely the same group of people. yes a couple differences but not a ton. but ti has been a LONG time and perhaps things have changed since then.

also it does seem MMR can decay since I used to be in games with a lot of the higher leaderboard players and now I almost never see them.

I think you are conveniently ignoring that a ton of players stopped playing BGs due to the pre-made issue and they have no way of knowing that a random night there are no pre-mades running to make BGs enjoyable for them for that night.

idk · January 2020

mav1234 wrote: »

show previous quotes

idk wrote: »

Zos told us their reasoning. Player feedback and an experiment. They have not said a thing about premade issues.

They did falsely suggest it would help competitiveness since it would actually reduce the chance of getting a healer in once group as well as increase the chance of getting a 4 healer group. That would be funny but at least competent players are able to swap builds pretty fast.

Those that complained about premade groups will have no one to blame now.

Inklings, who knows more devs than I do, has suggested there is more to it than that. If he's right, that rationale WOULD be helpful.

It would be best to hear it from the devs. Same thing was said after they announced they were implementing faction lock due to player feedback . Some said there was behavior Zos wanted to curb yet they left one campaign without faction lock and game more options without faction lock since then which does not support those hearsay claims,

BaiterOfZergs · January 2020

Jhough503 wrote: »

In what world does putting four random players on a team that aren't communicating make it "more competitive". I do bgs with my friends to play something different than the same laggy boring mess of cyrodiil that it has been for the last 5 years. How about you add some actual pvp content like a new pvp zone instead of a stupid hammer and act like it's some big new pvp attraction.

To be fair just about every moba and a good amount of competitive multiplayer games share one thing in common. And that’s having the solo queue as more competitive because it exposes how good you are as a teammate and your ability to adapt with who you have.

mav1234 · January 2020

is the problem in live BGs really groups, or is the problem healing, guarding, tanky builds?

mav1234 · January 2020

jaws343 wrote: »

I think you are conveniently ignoring that a ton of players stopped playing BGs due to the pre-made issue and they have no way of knowing that a random night there are no pre-mades running to make BGs enjoyable for them for that night.

Mursie's argument was lower MMR players will be filled in to match MMRs between teams when premades aren't present. I don't know that is true.

jaws343 · January 2020

mav1234 wrote: »

is the problem in live BGs really groups, or is the problem healing, guarding, tanky builds?

Those things on there own aren't a problem. A tanky player can be identified and avoided or worked through. A healer or a guard can be targeted. The problem is 4 players running complimentary gear and skills which can only happen in a pre-made.

With a solo queue, you cannot reliably plan to just be a healer or a tank without potentially being ineffective and you have to learn to play with the players you are teamed with rather than just ball grouping through the opposing teams.

mav1234 · January 2020

BaiterOfZergs wrote: »

To be fair just about every moba and a good amount of competitive multiplayer games share one thing in common. And that’s having the solo queue as more competitive because it exposes how good you are as a teammate and your ability to adapt with who you have.

aren't the actual leagues/esport aspects of those moba games always team based?

Iskiab · January 2020

idk wrote: »

show previous quotes

Urvoth wrote: »

Yeah, I don't play ESO to be a solo player. If I wanted to play a solo PvP experience or play the game solo, I'd play a different game that wasn't a MMO.

There's plenty of better options to improve the queues, but ZOS is just taking the easiest band-aid route that is just going to drive more players away.

LOL. Yea, the logic is lacking when in an MMORPG you force players to play solo in a group activity.

Hopefully this is just to prove to those who complain about premades the issue is not premades.

This.. so much this... so many people think they’re high MMR when they aren’t even close. First two weeks you’ll have lots of games with people going 20+ and 0.

ShenaniganSquad · January 2020

Kidgangster101 wrote: »

This is a terrible change. A lot of people will no longer que and this change will make people not want to play. I love to que as a duo with my wife and just relax so now we can't play together in a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE game. Catering to the solo players is exactly how you lose customers because we pay to play online with friends. If we have to play solo why shouldn't we just go play solo player games that don't actually have a monthly fee to have everything? Lol

This.... its not just about pre mades, its about friends and couples who play the game together. I can not believe Zos was this incredibly stupid.

I have seen numerous guilds reacting to this as well, and my guild is no different, we bring new players into BG's as a group to teach them pvp.. how the F are we supposed to do this now? ...

I think the developers have lost their minds, this game is turning into a solo fest. What you should be doing over there is making options for solo players but FOCUS on the team and group play... learn to fix the group tool.. maybe hire someone from an mmo who actually has a group system that works..

I agree with the poster who said BG's needs a lobby... you guys are gonna lose so much money if you keep going down this road.

mursie · January 2020

mav1234 wrote: »

show previous quotes

jaws343 wrote: »

I think you are conveniently ignoring that a ton of players stopped playing BGs due to the pre-made issue and they have no way of knowing that a random night there are no pre-mades running to make BGs enjoyable for them for that night.

Mursie's argument was lower MMR players will be filled in to match MMRs between teams when premades aren't present. I don't know that is true.

i'm not saying the system today does what i propose. i'm saying in a solo que world, where mmr's of all players are based on solo que matches... inter-mingling players of various mmr such that the group MMR rating of the 4 solo players is equal to the other two teams could be done.

meaning - having solo que matches where only 2000+ mmr players face only against other 2000+ mmr plus players wouldn't be necessary.

mav1234 · January 2020

jaws343 wrote: »

Those things on there own aren't a problem. A tanky player can be identified and avoided or worked through. A healer or a guard can be targeted. The problem is 4 players running complimentary gear and skills which can only happen in a pre-made.

With a solo queue, you cannot reliably plan to just be a healer or a tank without potentially being ineffective and you have to learn to play with the players you are teamed with rather than just ball grouping through the opposing teams.

the only time being a healer is ineffective in a bg is when it is deathmatch and there's 3+ of you XD

it seems to me the real problem is healing others, particularly on classes dedicated to it, and that this problem has become MUCH more noticable because stamina lost its ability to splash heal, but magicka didn't.

Rockett · January 2020

This is a nice change, been wanting this for a while or 1v1's. Premades should be put up against other premades though 4v4, 2+2v2+2

BaiterOfZergs · January 2020

mav1234 wrote: »

show previous quotes

BaiterOfZergs wrote: »

To be fair just about every moba and a good amount of competitive multiplayer games share one thing in common. And that’s having the solo queue as more competitive because it exposes how good you are as a teammate and your ability to adapt with who you have.

aren't the actual leagues/esport aspects of those moba games always team based?

Yes but that’s for an entirely different reason. They usually have teams like you would in other sports, so it makes more sense to cover the entire teams. Makes for easier organization too. Although, there’s still plenty of solo tournaments.

Edit: also note that mobas have millions of players , they end up narrowing it down to 50-100 players that make up teams. Those are the players we end up watching. But those high end players usually come from solo play.

mav1234 · January 2020

mursie wrote: »

i'm not saying the system today does what i propose. i'm saying in a solo que world, where mmr's of all players are based on solo que matches... inter-mingling players of various mmr such that the group MMR rating of the 4 solo players is equal to the other two teams could be done.

meaning - having solo que matches where only 2000+ mmr players face only against other 2000+ mmr plus players wouldn't be necessary.

right, that makes sense. I'm not sure that is how it works now, was my only question. true that it could be changed to even if it doesn't.

I think we need a solo and group queue. But IF Inklings is right and they can't do both right now since 2 queues is too complex... what if group mmr had a modifier based on number of people in the group that increased the mmr of those players? aka my buddy and I duo queue, both of us are low mmr, so we get placed against people with moderate MMR.

it honestly just seems that the problem is more healers/healing than it is groups.

Rake · January 2020

This will bring more players to BGs.
No more premade equals less boring games

mav1234 · January 2020

BaiterOfZergs wrote: »

Yes but that’s for an entirely different reason. They usually have teams like you would in other sports, so it makes more sense to cover the entire teams. Makes for easier organization too. Although, there’s still plenty of solo tournaments.

Edit: also note that mobas have millions of players , they end up narrowing it down to 50-100 players that make up teams. Those are the players we end up watching. But those high end players usually come from solo play.

sure, and I agree solo queue can be more competitive, but BGs are not what I would call a "competitive" mode compared to what some games have for instanced competitive pvp.

I would be fine with a competitive queue for solo players and leave the current queue as it is too. That would also solve the issue IMO.

MisterBigglesworth · January 2020

They should make 4 modes total:

Solo Unranked
Solo Ranked
Group Unranked
Group Ranked

Alomar wrote: »

So, if this isn't an mmo anymore do we get our money back? lol

New World in May

https://massivelyop.com/2020/01/18/new-world-just-took-a-hard-turn-away-from-a-pvp-slugfest-hardcore-pvpers-are-not-happy/

mav1234 · January 2020

MisterBigglesworth wrote: »

They should make 4 modes total:
Solo Unranked

Solo Ranked

Group Unranked

Group Ranked

I would like that a lot. But honestly I think that just unranked, Solo Ranked, and Group Ranked would be sufficient. And if the argument is that a bunch of people will come back for solo queue, that should populate the queues nicely IMO.

Alomar · January 2020

MisterBigglesworth wrote: »

They should make 4 modes total:
Solo Unranked

Solo Ranked

Group Unranked

Group Ranked

show previous quotes

Alomar wrote: »

So, if this isn't an mmo anymore do we get our money back? lol

New World in May

https://massivelyop.com/2020/01/18/new-world-just-took-a-hard-turn-away-from-a-pvp-slugfest-hardcore-pvpers-are-not-happy/

Old news mate, still miles better than the pvp in ESO. Meanwhile, I participated in 800 man stress test events...no lag either.

Iccengi · January 2020

mursie wrote: »

it drives you away? ok. how many were driven away playing against you and your friends? how many matches did you steamroll where the opposing side with 0 kills and double digit deaths logged off the game and never returned to bg's? if you think this doesn't happen right now, you're delusional. i see it every single day in bg's. entire 4 man teams with 0 kills and double digit deaths while other teams with duo, 3 or even full 4 are steaming rolling double digit kills and 0 deaths. I understand that farming is fun sometimes...and not queing with your friends may deter you playing some...or entirely. but understand the other side of the coin. there are people not playing at all simply because you were queing with friends.

i believe strongly that overall - this will be a major boon to population activity in bg's. more people will now enter and enter confident they are playing a fair match...than those that will leave.

I get this but the same thing happens in duo’s been in duo’s where we are against a premade a stacked random and somehow two low levels or snipe builds or what not get on our team... like wtf

In the end the mmr calculations are not helpful and that’s the big issue. And I’m not sure it’s based on games played. I’m pretty much on 1-2 dedicated PvP toon’s. But my friends will get on various ones some they’ve used a lot and some none. The high utilized ones we get thrown into the trashiest of noob bg then they get on a noob toon and it’s straight sweaties. Makes no sense.
I’m convinced zos actually tries to queue by “averaging” the group mmr which doesn’t work on a premade and that’s why you can have 1 highly stacked team up against nobodies or even a mixed groups of skill that would be pretty fun if all 3 teams were equally “averaged”

But the solution is not get rid of grouping but instead fix mmr.

Parasaurolophus · January 2020

I am very happy with these changes. I loved playing with my friend on BG before. But then a group of two people began to register as premiids. So we with two random people began to resist the full meta groups consisting of varden / dk / sorcerers. Since then, BG has become terrible for us. But I still think that this is true, since two player premides in the team give an advantage, albeit not so strong.
I think simply, ZoS is not sure that the lines for 4x4x4 matches will not be too long.

Anyron · January 2020

mav1234 wrote: »

show previous quotes

Kalixte wrote: »

Get re*t premades.

the problem is this doesn't only impact the groups of 4 running optimized group setups with a dedicated healer or two, it also impacts the random buddies queuing together to learn pvp and the game together. Which is not to the benefit of the game.

you know they cannot learn how to play if they are always dead..

what happens when one unskilled player groups together with 3 more unskilled players?

this change is only good and it makes BGs easier for new players

mandricus · January 2020

I want to look at this change as a first step in the right direction. I'm ok with solo queue, even if that will mean that I won't be able to play with my friends for a couple of months. Most of the people will finally realize that most of the times they are stomped not by premades, but simply by people that know how to play as a group.

After that, add a separate group queue for premades asap.

Then, in a future patch, allow us to create private instances with the ability to choose teams formation and battleground type, opening up for the player base the possibility to create tournaments.

That day, battlegrounds will be almost perfect.

BaiterOfZergs · January 2020

mav1234 wrote: »

show previous quotes

BaiterOfZergs wrote: »

Yes but that’s for an entirely different reason. They usually have teams like you would in other sports, so it makes more sense to cover the entire teams. Makes for easier organization too. Although, there’s still plenty of solo tournaments.

Edit: also note that mobas have millions of players , they end up narrowing it down to 50-100 players that make up teams. Those are the players we end up watching. But those high end players usually come from solo play.

sure, and I agree solo queue can be more competitive, but BGs are not what I would call a "competitive" mode compared to what some games have for instanced competitive pvp.

I would be fine with a competitive queue for solo players and leave the current queue as it is too. That would also solve the issue IMO.

Think many people are for multiple queues to solve the problem and have requested it many times. The devs chose one queue for whatever reason, so that’s what we have to work with..for now.

Olupajmibanan · January 2020

We used to play one BG per day with my wife for daily rewards. You can't imagine the terror that awaits me if we actually meet each other in BG and I beat her.

Epicasballs · January 2020

The notes indicated this change is a test. They tested no CP in all Cyrodiil campaigns... we got over it. They tested CP enabled BGs... we got over it. If this change is part of a larger goal to eventually improve the overall BG experience I say suck it up and let them gather some data. MMR has been busted for awhile. That busted MMR has driven more people away from BGs than anything else. Waiting 30 mins for a BG against the same people you fought last match is getting stale.

Grimlok_S · January 2020

mav1234 wrote: »

show previous quotes

jaws343 wrote: »

I think you are conveniently ignoring that a ton of players stopped playing BGs due to the pre-made issue and they have no way of knowing that a random night there are no pre-mades running to make BGs enjoyable for them for that night.

Mursie's argument was lower MMR players will be filled in to match MMRs between teams when premades aren't present. I don't know that is true.

The current system actually tries to do this.. poorly. I've been on both sides of this, but after 30+ minute queues I can expect to see 1-2 sub-CP160 teammates. But unfortunately squared up against my usual opponents, which my new friends are wildly unprepared for.

Hopefully going forward there are adjustments made to spread out the "new" and experienced players.. rather than having a single team of lowbies with an experienced player or two sprinkled in fed to the wolves.

mav1234 · January 2020

Epicasballs wrote: »

The notes indicated this change is a test. They tested no CP in all Cyrodiil campaigns... we got over it. They tested CP enabled BGs... we got over it. If this change is part of a larger goal to eventually improve the overall BG experience I say suck it up and let them gather some data. MMR has been busted for awhile. That busted MMR has driven more people away from BGs than anything else. Waiting 30 mins for a BG against the same people you fought last match is getting stale.

But what kind of data does this gather that would be better than gthering data with two queues? They don't tell us wht exactly their long term goals are. If they'd said "We'll add a group queue in next patch", a lot of us would be less annoyed.

MrGhosty · January 2020

I posted this on the other nearly identical thread but since it got closed I will repost my feedback here.

"Not going to argue the change as it's always seemed evenly split with those who wanted it/didn't want it but this has killed bgs for me. This was an activity that I enjoyed doing with my wife, sometime we'd dominate and other times we got trounced but it was always fun to be able to work together.

I don't enjoy Cyrodil, never have, but I liked the fast paced action of bgs and part of that fun for me was being able to team up with my partner and dive in for a quick match here and there.

I have no doubt there were people running premade groups, but I think the failure is on zos' part for not providing better incentive to get people working together. This game mode is never going to be balanced or fair unless they completely remove gear sets from the equation and just give everyone flat stat armor while in the game mode. What it was, was a fun way to quickly get into some great fights without having to deal with riding horse simulator. My absence likely won't affect anything, I have no illusions there. It is a bummer of a change all the same."

In addition to that, I would like to see them figure out a development pipeline that would let them do more frequent testing and experiments without needing to weight for the lengthy patch cycle. As it stands now, I can just look forward to not playing bgs for the duration of this "test" and that is not exciting. On the other hand if they had the ability to just run it for set durations I would happily plan around it to continue playing as I personally enjoy while allowing solo players to do the same.

I want to re-iterate that I don't think it was right for solos to put up with the mess they had to, so if it's just my turn to be dissatisfied I can live with that. There is plenty more in the game for me to do, it's just a shame that we have to choose.

mav1234 · January 2020

MrGhosty wrote: »

In addition to that, I would like to see them figure out a development pipeline that would let them do more frequent testing and experiments without needing to weight for the lengthy patch cycle. As it stands now, I can just look forward to not playing bgs for the duration of this "test" and that is not exciting. On the other hand if they had the ability to just run it for set durations I would happily plan around it to continue playing as I personally enjoy while allowing solo players to do the same.

I get this is an "experiment." But wht kind of experiment, exactly? Wht is the hypothesis they are testing, and what are the alternatives they think they are evaluating?

I am extremely frustrated because this is one of the core aspects of the game I enjoy and look forward to. It is legit something I will not be able to do now. I get that it sucked to queue solo into premades, but the problem has always been how those premades were constructed, not tht they were groups at all.