Fact 1 is that there is no commitment on the part of the devs to implement solo queue, and they are unwilling to share any information about why.
Fact 2 is that every time one decides to queue for domination it is highly likely that he/she ends up in a premade vs pug match.
==> wasted time for everyone.
So premades, why do you even queue? And more to the point, since so much time is wasted for everyone, why do you not take it to the preview server?
Premades/pvp guilds can coordinate because they know eachother. Pugs cannot benefit from such relationships. Surely the non-wasted time gained for you vastly outweighs the costs of the couple of minutes it takes to switch to the preview server. At the same time, if all the premade action is there, the live server will allow a semblance of a solo queue for those who pug; or at least move towards that direction.
==> Less time wasted for everyone.
Nezdin (DC)
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
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OR i need to go to past? ONce UPON a time leaderboard was better than what we have now. SOME "top pvp" disconnected during matches leaving so the game wouldnt register their defeat. ME? i didnt care about leaderboard top pvp cared and did those bs.
many premades are just queing there in between waiting for dungeon or raids party are created (their own words). So basically pve players just spend some time in pvp in between waiting for pve instances and rule there. yeah pvp in this game is as absurdly bad. Deal with it like myself. I rather quit this game mode altogether
The idea to play on preview is not mine. Some guys I met in matches told me that they used to play on preview in premades. This is obviously not the case a lot of the time given what we observe on the live server. So I am asking why they don't make this a norm, especially since it only takes some coordination on their part, and there is indication that they have done it in the past.
Do you really think that this is the case? My observation is the opposite: you meet premades multiple times over a couple of hours on a given day - why would they queue time after time if they only cared about spending some time between dungeon runs? A team of 5 can do their own etos, CN, or any other dungeon run without waiting! PvE players: maybe some of them do it due to the AD. However if premades did not form on live server, then even PvE-ers would be happy to queue for PvP just for the fun of a match.
I can tell you my own reasons for PvPing: there are matches that can be really fun. For me, this is the most fun part of the whole game. Unfortunately it is not systematic. These fun matches are never pugs against premades. They are when a random set of pug-ers gets pitted against another set of pug-ers (including myself). That is also when the least time is wasted.
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
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I can tell you my own reasons for PvPing: there are matches that can be really fun. For me, this is the most fun part of the whole game. Unfortunately it is not systematic. These fun matches are never pugs against premades. They are when a random set of pug-ers gets pitted against another set of pug-ers (including myself). That is also when the least time is wasted.
There are two different ideas here that are consistently confused, and conflated by people in this forum, What PvP IS & what PvP was MEANT TO BE. Or rather, the difference between PvP as it was implemented, and the situation that PvP has become over time. Originally, this game had no PvP attached to it, in the concept phase. The powers that be decreed that " It's an MMO, & ALL MMO's have to have PvP!!!" So they went ahead and tacked one on. The game was meant to be a solo PVE environment, where, in order to progress, solo players would have to come together to beat obstacles that they would never be able to overcome alone. The reason that the PvP, even as an under funded add-on, became so popular is because the mechanics are just so darn cool. Unfortunately, this brought more PvP players to the game & the balance was thrown off kilter. PvP became a money maker, & the input of PvP players caused changes to be made which further upset the original balance of the game. Ultimately these changes "broke" the environment, & in attempting to course correct, the devs had to come down a little harder than they would have if they had shown a little spine & just said "NO!" a little earlier. The current PvP environment, (low population, bad class balance, pre-mades vs. pugs, etc.,) are results of years of mistakes, not one of them game breaking on their own, but cumulatively a disaster. There are some signs of hope. 1 vs. 1 in stronghold, if it proves popular enough could be used to build inter- ( & eventually Intra-) guild PvP matches. the devs have been working on class balance for about a year & they are almost halfway there. I hope it can all be worked out. I would dearly like to try the wonderful PvP I have heard about from pre Mod 6. But it took 3 years to break this... it can't be fixed over night. Still... I don't see why we can't have a "permanent" solo-queue while we wait?
This is a totally vacuous statement.
It is your subjective, normative belief that the current pvp queue is intended to be played that way. I noticed that you frequently resort to this one-liner in your statements in the forum. Giving the option to queue in teams or solo says absolutely nothing about the intentions behind the creation of the mechanism. Even if we entertain the baseless assumption that that was the initial intention, it is really not smart to say that: if initial intention = X then I adhere to X even if it is against my interests.
A nuclear power plant that has significant faults was surely built with the intention of running and producing energy. Is the optimal decision to make use of it? This is a rhetorical question so I will leave you to imagine both the answer to it and the parallel with pvp.
More to the point now; since you are a self-professed premader in an active pvp guild, why not volunteer an answer to the initial post?
@wintersmoke
I agree with your statements; I also do not understand why we cannot have solo queue, but the crux is this: devs are silent on it. Cryptic may think it a prudent strategy but it is actually having the opposite effect: it creates distrust in the community. Being silent on an issue just screams "I do not want to commit to something I cannot/will not deliver". To avoid saying "we will not give you what you ask for" and risk people just quitting, Cryptic opts to gamble on players' hope that things will improve (don't they say "Hope dies last"?).
If there is any hope that they will make important pvp changes, these are likely to take place in a long time...years maybe. Great, but as JM Keynes once said "In the long run we're all dead." Post after post on this forum suggests changes to pvp and lists imbalances. This won't change anything though. Since we cannot count on the devs to improve things, the only way forward is to do something ourselves. There was a post by someone on the Russian server a few months ago describing how they made the best of a bad situation: player-driven initiatives! The power to do something about this resides in the hands of those who are connected and can coordinate however - if all big pvp guilds enforced preview server matches for premades only and sanctioned solo only on live maybe we could make the best of a bad situation. I know of some people who mentioned preview matches, so it obviously works. The question is, why not make this a norm?
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
People like to PvP with their friends, like people like to PvE with their frineds. There's usually not much more to it, except for when one group fail at sniping a premade they know are active. I've had that happend a lot. It also happends when people try to sync queue on live.
Coordinating a match like that can take longer than getting a queue match with the correct team on live for various reasons, especially if someone has a poor connection, and hasn't been keeping their preview patching up to date for a while, or never patched it at all.
We actually waited about 1,5 hours on someone who was patching for the first time. All for one match. It gets old real fast.
PvP'ing with a full team in between dungeon runs, or while waiting for someone, sounds more like the exception rather than the rule to me, but I don't know most people in the game; so I can't really argue against it. I can only partially agree with you on this one.
My most fun matches are in premade vs premade, but those don't happend too often, so I usually queue alone, or sometimes with one or two others, and even though I've had fun pug vs premade matches, those are also exceptions rather than the rule.
We would probably agree fully, not partially, on this. I think that I would thoroughly enjoy pm vs pm, much more than pug vs pug. But no one in my guild or alliance does PvP (maybe one or two exceptions in different time zones). Even if I did have a group of guildies to do premades, what is the point? Getting teamed up against a poor team of lower geared pugs? Or meeting over-geared pvp premades that will smash us anyway? We are therefore condemned to pug and hope that random matching is on our side (something that premades destroy). Those matches where randomness blesses us are the only matches that I have known, and a small subset of those have been really awesome.
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
this would improve things but I have no faith in the leaders of pvp guilds to step up. pvp guilds won't change behaviors because is easier to stomp pugs then get organized. They're lazy
some things dont change mod after mod
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
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It's completely unfair to match a 5 man team who are fully geared (and communicating) against 5 random puggers - most of whom will be low level with no/little tenacity.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
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seems to me its the Pve player that is the lazy one bro and full of excuses .....
The Pvp Player has multiple gear sets and has to grind multiple things a pve player does not
the pvp player goes to preview server and test various build and load out on each other .. the pve player does not ...
the pvp player tries different strategies trains vs differnt builds and uses a mike .... the pve player does not ...
seems to me its the Pve player that is the lazy one bro .....
a pvp player still had to grind out all the pve content as well ...
waiting tons of time on preview server to even sync Q yup that is pretty lazy ...
so there are no lazy pve players then right ????
I suppose pvp players that earned a level 20 guild hall by doing mostly pve are lazy too right ?
and pve players that get together an overpower team to smash thru some content skirmish are not lazy too ?
perhaps they should gear down too right.... oh thats true the Pve monsters dont complain ...
so getting together a strong(er) coordinated team in an MMO to get thru content faster is lazy gotcha .... *checks box off*
so so called "pve players" never Q more then 1 person at a time (and should not )for pvp concorer shards to upgrade their guild power boon ... cause they want to be martyrs right ??
but perfectly acceptable to form a "premade for pve content" cause you are lazy and want to run it easier ..
double standard much bro
Expecting teams to transfer to the preview server is unrealistic - it also only covers PC, not the consoles.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
Let's say they introduced solo q. It'll be better for all? Not really. People are still competing, and they only need to be slightly better than you to cause you to return to the forums claiming the game is unbalanced or this certain class is too OP.
How much are you willing to invest to be better than the next guy? When you do, it's likely he or she will invest slightly more until someone's breaking point. That's when the argument stops being about premades and turns into something else because the end result is the same. Someone has to lose. There will always be consistent losers who are not satisfied.
In parallel, fewer premades on live --> more of a solo Q feel on live. I totally agree that this is not a long-term solution and everyone should be able to benefit from "good" pvp, but if some improvement can be made for PC players due to some particularity (option of preview) on PC, I don't see why they should not benefit, while no harm is done to non-PC players.
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
-lack of organisation? i.e. the matching will happen only as soon as 2 full teams of 5 players are queuing, and for some reason player 1 or player 7 have not come to the preview server; or
-the queuing system being flawed in some way? i.e. even if 2 teams of 5 players are on preview and queuing, the matching will not automatically happen?
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
you will not get insta pop you will wait potentially forever to 5 v 5 sync till other people get out of Q thats why a 5 v 5 lobby keeps getting requested you the match and potentially map can be set...
then people keep berating take it to preview take it to preview !!!!
what if there is a rival guild or people you hate you will never catch them or get them to go on preview to be tought a lesson you can only catch them in open regular q on regular server.. a few players and guilds come to mind..
even 1 person Qing solo on preview can troll / mess up the Q as it looks to form random teams of 5 v 5 teams or preset 5 v 5
also the constant need to patch the preview server (some people have slower connections ) and transfer characters from live
also you cant do regular pve game activities with regards to character progression while on preview waiting in Q
so a semi casual pickup match is impossible
xbox and Ps4 dont have a preview server and this really solves nothing for a lot of the population
in pug match weaker players knows who they can go toe to toe with and who they can avoid