Can't duo queue/No duo queue in 8v8 solo is a mistake.

ecru · October 30

First off, 8v8 group queues are taking forever with a group of 2. They literally do not pop, so queueing with one other person is impossible right now. The reason for this seems obvious--there are not a lot of people queueing for 8v8 group, much less groups of 2. I don't understand why we're either forced to play solo, or if we decide to play with one other player, we have the potential to be placed against two groups of 4 as a duo.

Having a scenario where three or four different groups (2+2+4, or 2+2+2+2) going up against two larger groups (4+4) is only going to lead to miserable imbalanced matches for anyone who is duo queued due to the potential of better cooperation and organization of two larger groups (who are probably in discord) than is possible with 3 or 4 individual groups. I was very excited to duo queue with my wife, but it simply isn't possible for us to play together unless we find another two players to join us, and we didn't want sweaty group vs group pvp anyway, we just wanted to duo queue casually and have fun.

This is such a weird design decision because I have never seen instanced queues implemented like this this in any other mmo. Queueing with one other person into a random non-group, unranked BG has always been possible in basically every other game that has larger matches (10v10, 15v15, etc). To balance matches out, all that would have to be done is matching one duo on one team vs another duo on another team. Why wasn't it implemented like this? It feels like we're being punished for trying to duo queue, and being pigeon-holed into either solo or a full group.

ecru · October 30

Something else to add: A lot of players are clearly having trouble with matches filling up. If duos were allowed to queue into 8v8 solo, the pool of players would be larger, queues will be faster, and this should be less of an issue in general.

Necrotech_Master · October 30

theres already some known issues about matches not filling properly which are being worked on by the devs

duos are allowed in the group queue, if its not popping could be more people are playing the solo queue, or the other problems with the queue are the issue

ecru · October 30

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

theres already some known issues about matches not filling properly which are being worked on by the devs

duos are allowed in the group queue, if its not popping could be more people are playing the solo queue, or the other problems with the queue are the issue

Yeah, there are clearly more players in the solo queue because it's easier to just click a button than to find someone to group with. The problem is the fact that multiple groups of 2 (2+2+4) or multiple groups of 3 (3+3+2) have to also be in the queue for you to get into a match as a group of 2. It's more likely that players are either queueing with a full group, or not queueing at all.

This brings up another issue, which is group composition. A lot of groups of 4 will probably have roles at least somewhat sorted out. They're more likely to have something like 3 dps and 1 healer, with the hope that they would end up with another group that has a healer, making it 6 dps 2 heals. Obviously not every group will be like this, but group composition will get more organized as group sizes increases. If you're queueing as a duo, it's much less likely that either one of you can (or even wants to) choose a healing role. In a situation that's 2+2+2+2 vs 4+4, you are probably a lot more likely to have zero healers on one side vs two on the other side.

The 8v8 group queue is just not every well thought out. It should really only be a group of 4, and the 8v8 solo queue should allow groups of 2 to avoid all of these issues and allow players to duo queue without potentially ending up in a sweaty, imbalanced match against two organized groups in voice comms.

Aldoss · November 1

I'll have to edit this now that the queues are "fixed", but wife and I attempted to play during the day twice this week to see if the new format resolved the dead queue.

It didn't.

Group queue only reliably pops between 5pm EST and 2am EST. Any other time, you'll wait between 10-50min for enough players to queue.

We've had one 8v8 match during the day that had an obvious 4's in it, and just as I suspected, they were completely oppressive to the entire lobby and then the queue died.

8v8 needs to be solos and duos only. It should be the one casual mode where people can go to get a quick match and experience some fun, non-CP combat in a dynamic environment.

4v4 needs to be solo and group, with the obvious 2 and 4 player group options.

For a game that advertises "Millions of active players", it's pretty pathetic that not even 14 other people are interested in queuing for 8v8 during off-prime hours on PCNA.

bladenick · November 2

Then ZOS need either add new queue as duo group or combine it to exist group queue distinguish from Solo
There already lopsided in solo 4v4 for most round, allow duo queue make this even worse

Joy_Division · November 2

ZOS was told by many players from the beginning that 8V8 should have 1 que, with solos and duos. ZOS said 8v8 was for a more casual experience. There isn't anything casual about a comped group of 4 in comms.