Premades vs soloers.
It’s not always a mess when up against a premade (see below).
I understand the frustration with being paired against a full premade, however. Most times I try and engage in conversation and tactics with my fellow soloers, other times it works out fine (see below). Other times they just flat out don’t listen – which is a very big problem. A lot of soloers go into sPvP as exactly that, solo, and ignore chat. This makes no sense when the objectives require working as a team.
It is really dependent on who you are teamed up with, though. For me, a big problem is being in a team with a bad collection of classes. No, I do not want two thieves on my team, or three warriors, nor four DH (actually happened once). If the game balanced the classes amongst the teams more efficiently, I think this would go a long way to helping a mostly-solo team against a premade.
I like how people post individual games where they have a bad time and try to use their tiny sample space as proof that there needs to be a change. So you had an unfair match-up once as a solo queuer in an unranked queue, and lost. Is that supposed to be the travesty it is being advertised as? Because it really doesn’t sound that bad to me.
“He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”
It’s not always a mess when up against a premade (see below).
I understand the frustration with being paired against a full premade, however. Most times I try and engage in conversation and tactics with my fellow soloers, other times it works out fine (see below). Other times they just flat out don’t listen – which is a very big problem. A lot of soloers go into sPvP as exactly that, solo, and ignore chat. This makes no sense when the objectives require working as a team.
It is really dependent on who you are teamed up with, though. For me, a big problem is being in a team with a bad collection of classes. No, I do not want two thieves on my team, or three warriors, nor four DH (actually happened once). If the game balanced the classes amongst the teams more efficiently, I think this would go a long way to helping a mostly-solo team against a premade.
Yeah, my screenshot above was even better: the 5-player premade only scored 5 points against the pug I was in. But usually premade teams seem to do a lot better than pugs. Give them a bit of time and that team I played against will probably be able to get 50 points, a force to be reckoned with.
I think one reason pugs are able to hold their own in many cases though is because GW2 pvp has a level playing field (in terms of gear etc). In other mmos, premades usually have grinded for the best gear, and the combination of overwhelmingly better gear and group coordination has a snowballing effect.
People vastly overestimate what premades alone are capable of.
Back in the day, me and two friends were super seriously into SPVP. We all were top 1000 NA ranked, always played our best characters, were always on voice, etc. That would have been terrible for anyone who wasn’t premade or super high skilled to play against.
Flash forward to today: I generally premake with PVE guildies. We may or may not be on voice depending on time of day (and not everyone has a mic), people may just be playing their level 2 class for the daily, may still be rabbit ranked, and may just not be that good. Anything but an almost zero adjustment for being premade is just going to screw up the game for everyone, and it will lead to people being forced to choose between discriminating against who they play with, or not having fun.
Only a portion of premades are actually a balance problem, and the MMR system is a better tool to deal with that.