Guild Wars 2

With the announcement of the leagues coming December 1st, I figured it was a pertinent to have another discussion on the solo/team combined queue.

League of Legends just announced Season 6 changes, and among those, they announced the allowance of up to 5 man premade queues into their solo queue. Previously they only allowed duo queue into solo. This blew up on the subreddit, in fact a large portion of the subreddit is posts with concerns about the new dynamic queue.

Three of the top posts on the subreddit made it to the front page of reddit simultaneously with concerns about how it will significantly harm solo queue.

Edit Here’s the megathread about it on the league subreddit, a lot of good ideas and discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3rht20/new_ranked_solo_queue_megathread/

Heart of the Storm had a dynamic queue, they removed it because it was horrible.
CS:GO Has a dynamic queue and it is currently a problem in the community. The higher you go in elo, the higher chance you’ll get put against a premade, and it happens.
Dota 2 has made it so that in solo queue you can’t go in with a premade of more than 3 players. That means no 4 or 5 queues into the solo queue. In addition to this, if you do party into solo queue, you have a separate MMR for solo and party queues. They also have a separate 5 ranked team queue. I think this is the system GW2 should adopt
LoL at least you still have a separate 5 man premade team queue, but I understand this is still potentially a population concern for gw2.

Regardless of the pros and cons, which I will list out, isn’t this evidence enough that the combined queue will be a problem?


Major pros of combined queue:
- Shorter queue times.
- More potential for balance comps because more people to select from.
- Have more options for playing with a number of friends if you all want to play but don’t have a full team.

Major cons of combined queue:
- If you solo queue and get a premade on your team you have a higher chance of being bullied. (This is evidence by a ton of anecdotal evidence in the other referenced games)
- Solo queueing into a premade is a horrible, almost guaranteed loss scenario where you don’t necessarily learn or have fun, you just get crushed.
- Longer queue times.
- The higher you progress in the ladder, the more often you will be queued into premades. (this has happened in every game that has a combined queue)
- Boosting will become a thing with the new leaderboard/icon next to your name in game. Having more than a duo into a solo queue could exacerbate this phenomenon.

Also because we don’t have a dedicated team queue in addition to the combined queue, you will have these cons:
- Teams will not want to solo queue because they want the highest rating possible.
- This will cause less people to stream because they don’t want to stream team queue, and may lose desire to stream since they don’t want to solo queue and risk ruining their rating.


Thoughts
As a competitive player I know that my specific wants only represent a small percentage of the population. Like high MMR being punished for solo queueing, or a top solo queuer not showing up at the top of the new leaderboards when you have teams there. I just want to be able to compete in both.
Guild Wars 2 has flip-flopped back and forth with combined queue, solo queue, combined queue, so I understand the developers probably have some metrics, and there is a method to their madness.
That said, please look around at the evidence from other games and consider a compromise here. – Maybe it’s just extra little matchmaking nuances in the combined algorithm you guys have. A reply to clarify would be appreciated.
Solo queue is a casual-enabler, and casual players are an important piece of the backbone of any competitive game.
Even if you have a system setup to lose less or even gain mmr when you lose against a premade, it still feels bad.
I would much rather wait even 5-8 extra minutes to have a good queue. I understand the general population would most likely just prefer shorter queues though. What if we could do hot joins again while in queue? That would make things at least slightly less boring during a long queue.

It will be interesting to see how the League of Legends dynamic queue complaints turn out, I will probably edit this thread with the outcome later on.

What do you guys think?
I can tell you right now I’ll have two accounts, a solo queue only account, and a team queue account. I’ll see how the experiences differ.

Here is a proposed Dota 2-esque queue system for GW2:
We would have
Normal Queue (1-5 players queuing together)
Ranked Solo (1-3 players queuing together)
Ranked Team (5 players queuing together)

for MMRs we would have:
Normal MMR
Ranked Solo – Solo queue MMR (1 player only), and Party (1-3 players) queue MMR.
Ranked Team MMR


Update from League of Legends stuff, also cleaning up this post
RiotLyte made a statement about the Dynamic queue, can be read here:
http://ask.fm/RiotLyte/answer/133759089858

I think the post addresses a lot of concerns, however looking at the replies in the Reddit thread still reveals a lot of the downsides which mainly effect the competitive population, which indirectly effects the other populations. Reddit post can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3rjzyh/riotlyte_on_dynamic_queue/
Some examples:

“My main concern is going to be that solo person paired with 4 players and having the lack of communication with them. Naturally playing comps with like Malphite / Jarvan initiation with Yasuo ult to follow up will be even more deadly now. Since they can all be on the same page. But being that player who is not on voice chat or know what the strategies are is going to put me at a huge disadvantage.
In solo queue there is rarely voice chat and most of us communicate through typing / pings. I expect to see a lot less of that now.
My only real solution to the idea is to limit dynamic queue to 3 players instead of 4. That way you are looking at 2 odd men out, and for everyone to be on the same page teams have an incentive of communicating with one another.”

-Basically the concern here is that even though the matchmaking is adjusting for coordination, the coordination can still beat the higher level players that are matched against the premade, since it could be like a 4 man premade.
Also, he suggested the same thing that Dota 2is doing; limiting the party to 3 in solo queue.


“This does not address the ranked skill level problem. As people rank up as a group rather than a solo/duo, it will be even more difficult than before to accurately measure a player’s actual skill level. Ranked queues will lose all meaning and Riot will effectively alienate a large portion of their player base.”

-Boosting, carrying, etc.


“Surely the fact that pro teams can now queue in “solo queue” as a group of 4 will result in the top 4+ spots of the solo queue ladder being cemented by pro players. That’s not to say that pro players wouldn’t by default occupy many of the top spots, but there were non-pros who managed to have greater solo impact and be placed higher in challenger than the pros, which gets them noticed by professional organisations. Now, the highest rank a player is going to realistically achieve is the spot behind every single other professional team’s 4 players."

Lyte also talked about how they have a bunch of backup plans as you can read here:
http://ask.fm/RiotLyte/answer/133762129090
Would be nice to hear something from Anet Devs.

I would much prefer having a separate Solo Queue and Team queue with separate leaderboards and MMR. However, I could see a situation where there is a combined queue and matchmaking system, but a separate leaderboard and MMR for when an individual queues solo, and when an individual queues with friends (duo or more.)

I think a situation/compromise like that would be a viable solution for a game like GW2, as it allows for both faster queue times and all the benefits that come with a combined queue, while still allowing solo queuing to be a viable “competitive” solution. for those who chooses to partake in it.

The only thing that would suffer is match quality, where as you say, the higher MMR solo queuers would start getting put against full teams and farmed, which is absolutely no fun. The only respite being that anyone else that high on the solo queue leaderboard/MMR would be facing the same situations as well, and when you solo queue you’re only really competing against other people who are solo queuing as well.

I could see that. Being able to filter the leaderboard by different categories, like those who only solo/duo or something.
You still have a situation of potential bad queue experiences though.

Supcutie.2538:

I could see that. Being able to filter the leaderboard by different categories, like those who only solo/duo or something.
You still have a situation of potential bad queue experiences though.

Not so much filter the leaderboard by different categories, but having completely separate leaderboards altogether.

Very cool post!

To start off, I think that Teams, actual Guild Teams, do not care about their personal MMR. I mean, Guild Teams will have their own Elo rating, that has nothing to do with every player’s individual MMR. So, there is no real problem in that situation.

But, if you mean casual teams that get together without using Guild Teams, just premades, then it’s “justified” as those guys may be too scared of playing alone.

On another note, I’d add to the “potential benefits of combined queue” the fact that it promotes, at some extent, playing as a group and that supposedly will increase actual teams playing the game. It’s always good to have more teams playing potentially competitively, right? In the end, it’s just a “potential benefit”, not a given.

While Solo Queuers are the main kitten ified, in an ideal scennario: Premades have their average MMR inflated (higher than theirs actually is), then Solo player has a higher MMR and supposedly a higher skill than them and (again, ideal scennario) if the Solo player faces a 4+1 team, he will have a 4-man premade on its side as well.

In the normal experience, where the ideal scennario rarely happens, if a player gets a really bad match for whatever reason (in Ranked play), he will still be awarded with “benefits” thanks to the “Odds of Victory” system they added to the Leagues, that is, you won’t be punished by an unfair match. It doesn’t solve matchmaking problems, but it makes feel the loss more “fair”.

We can talk as well that some full solos can beat premades with voice communication, but this argument is never well-received and somewhat lacking, as it’s not the norm. :P

About high mmr players, yeah, they will have problems with premades, if those premades are really skillful. Can’t say anything about this, it just highlights the potential truth.

I’ll admit I lean myself towards the combined/dynamic queue system, but I’m certainly biased as I, myself, don’t enjoy playing solo that much and I prefer doing so with friends, if there’s anyone online.

Finally, I believe that to fully profit the combined queue system, there needs to be more tools for Solo players to keep the “level”, such as in-game voice communications (and pings in GW2), a method to chose a class before heading onto the game and, for another part, a will from players to win, that is (and only if they are playing Ranked, i.e. “competitively”), communicating with his team, trying to have some kind of plan which, sadly, doesn’t occurr in GW2 matches. But this is just me…

I’ll say it again, very nice post. These are my concerns.

I mentioned the gaining or losing less benefits of playing against a premade as a solo. It’s still a bad experience for players many players.
You could argue that the goal of ranked is to get as high rated as you can, regardless of winning or losing. I guess we’ll have to see how that plays out.
I’m just imagining a top ranked solo queuer, constantly going against premades, always losing, and gaining rating. Is that a fun game experience? Subjective I suppose.
I do feel like we need a way to view solo and party/team queues separate at least. If teams are always winning, solo queuers will never realistically have the opportunity to be rank 1.

I do agree we need more tools for communication in game. Pings is always an example brought up. Ping people back, to a point, or to be careful of a +1 etc. Something would be nice here.

@Supcutie I support all of these words. #soloqueue

Yeah, I agree on the unfun part. We all have suffered unfair matches against premades, sometimes it is interesting and intense, other times it’s just a stomp that is no fun for anyone.

On the other hand, yeah, a Solo player won’t be able to reach rank 1, but we are guessing that the Solo player will always get paired with solos and against premades. That will depend on how the system ends up working for the higher end of PvP.

If they are paired not only against, but with premades, even if those premades are lower skilled that the Solo, then he might have a chance at getting rank 1. We are on the same question, if that is fun. If we guess both premades are using all the tools available to them (i.e. prepared, efficient composition, voice communication and constant map awareness) you shouldn’t really have a bad time, because your premade is “good” and they will help you/keep the enemy premade attention so they can’t overly punish and bully you. But that’s only a situation, there can be many.

The only real thing a separate ladder would show would be how many games you played as solo or with any friend, as your MMR (or League) is the same whether you play solo or premade.

P.S.: The thing I’d argue for Ranked Queue is that it’s the place where you play to improve, not only mechanical skill, but map awareness, strategies, etc etc etc; not a place where you play with no care of team composition, with no communication or such.That’s just playing. In a more “serious” environment than Unranked, but… that’s my perception at least.

Reikou mentioned separate leaderboard and MMR.
I think the elephant in the room still is the population in GW2.
I want to believe that a combined board will work out, there are concerns though for sure.

Supcutie.2538:

Reikou mentioned separate leaderboard and MMR.
I think the elephant in the room still is the population in GW2.
I want to believe that a combined board will work out, there are concerns though for sure.

I’m not sure why population would be an issue for MMR and leaderboards themselves?

If anything population would be an issue for matchmaking and queues.

Hence my proposal, combined matchmaking/queue, but separated MMR and leaderboards.

If you queue by yourself, you are put into the combined queue, but it will use your solo MMR for matchmaking and the results of the match will affect your solo leaderboard ranking.

If you duo+ queue, it will use your team queue MMR for matchmaking, and the results of the match will affect your team queue leaderboard ranking.

Hopefully this will make more sense.

Reikou.7068:

Supcutie.2538:

Reikou mentioned separate leaderboard and MMR.
I think the elephant in the room still is the population in GW2.
I want to believe that a combined board will work out, there are concerns though for sure.

I’m not sure why population would be an issue for MMR and leaderboards themselves?

If anything population would be an issue for matchmaking and queues.

Hence my proposal, combined matchmaking/queue, but separated MMR and leaderboards.

If you solo queue, you are put into the combined queue, but it will use your solo queue MMR for matchmaking and the results of the match will affect your solo queue leaderboard ranking.

If you duo+ queue, it will use your team queue MMR for matchmaking, and the results of the match will affect your team queue leaderboard ranking.

Hopefully this will make more sense.

Oh, much more sense now. That would need some work to do but I’d be interested on how it would work, interesting for sure.

Yeah sorry I was thinking separate queues.
You’re right though, I think that’s probably the best solution. It’s what Dota 2 does.
They have two queues for ranked, and three MMRs. You can only team queue with 5, if you do 1-3 in solo queue you’ll have a party MMR which is separate from solo queue MMR.
I’ll add this to the OP.

So to summarize:
We would have
Normal Queue (1-5 players queuing together)
Ranked Solo (1-3 players queuing together)
Ranked Team (5 players queuing together)

for MMRs we would have:
Normal MMR
Ranked Solo – Solo queue MMR (1 player only), and Party (1-3 players) queue MMR.
Ranked Team MMR

Unfortunately, if you combine team and ranked solo queues, you pretty much have to allow any combination of 1-5 players to queue.

I know it’s unlikely anything would come of these suggestions, especially since they already have the system where you can gain points for losing against a good team. Here it is anyway :P

There’s no way we can have 3 separate queues for gw2. The queue times already are 5-10 minutes and there are only 2 queue types that allow all sized parties. Make it have soloQ and partyQ. Solo queue is only for solo players, party queue allows any and all party sizes 1-5 (or you can restrict it to not allow 1 and 4 player parties but that’s not really the main issue). This would mean you remove unranked altogether to maintain decent queue duration but it’s a sacrifice worth making if this ranking system actually works.

@Uuni , yeah I feel you. Shorter queue times is better for the population overall.
I’m just trying to see if there’s a compromise to be found. A lot of what I am complaining about I do understand only applies to a small percentage of players.
1. High MMR might be punished for solo queueing.
2. A top solo queuer might not even be on the front page of the leaderboard; will just be teams.
I want to be competitive in both and not undermine myself by playing solo instead of with a team.

Assigning separate leaderboards for solos and teams would be difficult. Conquest mode is a team play. How would you rank individual players if the match making mixes solos and premades. Points, dps, mmr, win/loss ratio, or …? When you say just separate leaderboards for solos and premades, give proper suggestions like how would you program your code to properly assign individual players a rank in combined que system. They’re not the easy.

If they can’t provide soloque, my suggestion is to just provide the leaderboard for teams(after all, it’s called guild wars), and not rank individual players. It seems to me that premades will likely attain higher ranks on the leaderboard. It would probably be meaningless to rank individuals if the ranking depends on how many times they play as premades.

@Knkasa, I agree.

Everyone should just suggest how to “program your code” because “they’re not the easy.” That’s what the developers want when suggesting how to fix the “que” system.

knkasa.2608:

Assigning separate leaderboards for solos and teams would be difficult. Conquest mode is a team play. How would you rank individual players if the match making mixes solos and premades. Points, dps, mmr, win/loss ratio, or …? When you say just separate leaderboards for solos and premades, give proper suggestions like how would you program your code to properly assign individual players a rank in combined que system. They’re not the easy.

If they can’t provide soloque, my suggestion is to just provide the leaderboard for teams(after all, it’s called guild wars), and not rank individual players. It seems to me that premades will likely attain higher ranks on the leaderboard. It would probably be meaningless to rank individuals if the ranking depends on how many times they play as premades.

They already had leaderboards for both a year ago before they removed solo queue.

I think separate MMR for 2/3/4/5/solo would be the best.

I think having ranked solo queue (either strictly 1 person or up to 2, 3 is too many as it is a majority), ranked team queue (strictly 5 mans), and unranked queue (1-5) would be a good system to cater to most people. Anet says pvp is the fastest growing aspect of GW so the only queue that may have a population problem is team queue.

P.S. show us our MMR, I want to see how bad I am already Q_Q

Just another reason why Dota 2 is the best competitive game out there right now. Kappa

Updated the OP with RiotLytes response, and the responses to that.
I’m referencing League of Legends because they’re perceived as the game that has the most resources and should get it right. Also they don’t have a population problem and still decided to do it, so you get more pure responses regarding how it effects the competitiveness of solo queue.

RiotLyte’s response is interesting indeed, but as they’ve stated they have backup plans behind backup plans, and are much more open and willing to communicate this with their players than anet is. A quick response to negative feedback within a day or two.

The current mixed queue system has been a huge point of contention for over a year now, and I find it quite disconcerting that the devs at anet have not even begun to touch the subject with a 20 foot spork.

You’d end up with problems with population if there were 3 queues like some people are suggesting.

You’d really only want 2 queues, each with seperate leaderboards (solo, team), and the server list ability to join custom servers (like what exists currently).

And please please please strict dishonor punishment (or any really).

Really well thought out post. I agree with the OP, follow the dota 2 model as best we can with our population.

Hmm, some interesting points here.

We’re forgetting the additional stronghold split though. That puts the system and population under another layer of pressure. Unless they decide to keep stronghold unranked only (which I support honestly).

I also don’t think the population can support a full team queue. I’d rather see them put duo’s/trio’s in the team queue to begin with and 4-mans will just have to pickup someone from hotm. A full team queue would be ideal but we’ve seen 3 years of near to none incentive to create teams/pugs. Thus unless they would add some good incentive (both catered towards casual and competitive groups), I don’t see it being very populated.