Notes on pvp and the recent duo-queue

Discussing the recent duo queue in pvp, eliminating the ability to create premade parties takes away a lot of fun from bgs. J made a post recently after playing against my team and I for about 4 games. I agree it sucks to get put against one of our premade LC groups. We usually have 5 to 6 members in queue so one or two of us are always in the same boat as everyone else. However, these premade groups don’t like fighting you either. They are made with the intention of fighting other premades if that doesn’t happen, we drop group and solo-queue. You cannot expect to be able to beat them though without investing time into pvp and I don’t think J has spent the time necessary to be effective in bgs. J you admitted yourself you eventually started running around back capping instead of fighting leaving your team short a member and getting them rolled. In the first two matches you took me down as much as I did you. It was really challenging to down you. That team you faced was not the only one and we are in no way unbeatable. It was actually an unusual team config. We have many skilled players and its tough to take a whole team of any of them. I have said this many times before and in other threads but the most fun you can have in bgs is with 2 full premade groups battling each other. That’s where strategy, team dynamics, and seeing how the new changes to the classes play out against each other. In a team setting Paladins/warriors up front, scoundrels mid with the healers, and mages/rangers in the back of the group eliminating the ability to be 1 shot. Getting routed or flanked is a strategy advantage and games shouldn’t be able to balance out or account for every advantage in them.

Let’s return to premades for a minute. As it is we sit in queue for hours waiting for it to pop sometimes with 6 to 7 members waiting. If a new game type queue is made that will only increase. I cannot support any further segregation of the bg queue. We simply don’t have the players for it.

I have heard some ideas that can address peoples complaints without ruining everyone’s ability to play. We need more random game types. Domination is a dope game and makes coordinated team efforts rewarding. It’s also objective based so it does not facilitate teaching people how to battle on a team. People get the idea of doing nothing but back-capping and dragging the fights out way longer than need be effectively turning their teams into honor farms. In the current queue it would be nice to have a team death match with 4 on 4 teams. I also like the idea of an 8 player free for all. And lastly maybe this is my smash tendencies talking but I like the idea of a stock lives match. This would prioritize skillful playing and encourage survival over suicide-kamikaze-zerging play type. More maps would be a welcomed addition but that is a quality of life thing. I honestly have no problems with either side of the current one. It’s a great map.

To address the argument for smaller queues like a 1v1 or 2v2. This can be done in world and in no way will help anyone prepare for team combat. Instead of creating something that is easily rigged why not have the place for that outside of bgs. Have an arena or dojo in the fellowship halls where 1v1 or 2v2 or 3v3s could take place. This may be a bit grandioso but I would like the ability to build the fellowship halls how each wants and the ability to invite outside players in to visit. My ideal system would involve purchasing premade rooms and adding them to the current doors to give each guild a unique structure. Some fellowships may want to add a long hall with many doors and then add bedrooms for their members, some may want a trophy room, or treasury vault. The arena would be purchasable as one of these additions. I imagine this would encourage solo players to join guilds and create an atmosphere of uniqueness to the separate fellowships. We also need something to do with all this dram we are accumulating.

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i agree full 4 team queuing should be brought back so that we can reintroduce strategy and team work into the BGs. I also love the idea of stock lives matchs and 8 player free for alls.

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I think the biggest issue is that there’s a whole mission set for an activity that’s just… One activity, in one place. A whole mission set for one activity that is only available through queue.

I appreciate that PVP got some dedicated mission support, but I think battlegrounds are buckling under the weight of having to be everything for everyone. It’s structured PVP for the hardcore audience. It’s risk free PVP for the casual audience. Now we’re hoping to balance around both and everyone in between.

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That’s a really cool idea.

I agree switching things up would be neat.

We didn’t just make a change there because of one post by J, so let’s take the topic away from discussing one person, please.

We made the change because I completely agree with you that in an ideal world, pre-mades should be battling pre-mades. But that simply wasn’t what was happening 90% of the time; instead it was one pre-made versus a random grouping of people. In an ideal world the BG queue would be able to support both at the same time, and be able to pair pre-mades up against pre-mades and random groups up against random groups. But obviously that’s only going to happen when we get to a point where there is a higher population queuing at once.

I agree that in addition to duo-queuing, we should experiment with other game types, and I’ve already got that on our internal roadmap for the near-term. It may be that there are better types of games for the current population than the control-point style.

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Also while I’m in here discussing PvP, there have been a few reports that some players are leaving parties after joining a Battleground to attack both sides. Other than being incredibly poor sportsmanship (and, quite frankly, I can’t believe I even have to point that out), it’s exploiting the game in a way to gain additional PvP Honor Points beyond what could be achieved through normal gameplay. I will be adding monitoring for this in a hotfix later tonight; consider this a warning, if the behaviour persists further action will be taken including bans.

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The duo queue honestly donsnt work for capture the point gamemodes, if anything with this change the gamemode should of also changed. For a game thats is trying to develop pvp, the first gamemode should not of even been capture the point in the first place, it should of been normal Team Deathmatch.

Ok, I’m just going to say this:
The 4 team up option was killing the battlegrounds for beginners.

I litterly heard people with their mike on say that it was a messed up wast of time. There was groups where more then one person was afk, groups with kids, groups with people that actually belongd to the other team, and lots of people just testing out the game for the first time.

Those party’s got spawncamped, outnumbered, and wrecked, without even learning the map, killing anyone or capturing a flag.

So yah, random parties is probably better.

Maybe we can get a party challenging option at some point, skipping the que and directly challenging another team. But the que needs the mix

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I did not mean to center this on J. His post alluded to us and made a claim that we were invincible. We have definitely been beaten in bgs. If I broke any rules by being direct in reply I am sorry. He’s been getting into pvp more and I was trying to encourage him to continue. He helped me illustrate a point though that I had heard parroted a little bit. That is people can’t do anything against us so they start back-capping instead of actually playing. It’s a bad strat for everyone involved.

The queue has seemed longer since the duo-queue was implemented. In the beta we would run into the problem of unfair teams making the opposition quit playing. That lead us to random queueing to keep people involved. It wasn’t a rule though more of a mercy. In decent matches we wouldn’t drop group. You would know the numbers on it better than I would but ideal worlds aside if less people are queuing now what did it fix? Maybe adding an incentive to queue as a group would be a better fix and encourage more player to queue than limiting the ability to team up in queue.

As far as what happened earlier today with Carnage, I’ve been told it was a mistake not an attempt to honor farm. The two teams stopped fighting each other to camp that one guy. I wonder how much honor he could have gotten in a 7 on 1.

Burnator not sure your reasons are thought out. Afk’s and young kids will always have a chance to be there unless it is two full teams queuing right? We often have members on opposite teams, this is increased by the duo-queue btw, but its to that teams advantage as that members know what the main group is attempting and can do their best to counter act them. Beginning players will still get wrecked regardless. That’s the nature of skill based play. If you’re there to gain skill it’s never a waste of time.

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This (OP) is pretty well worded. I am growing a bit tired of the ever-repeating arguments in each thread though, specially those to help the queue. But here a few, again, summarized:

  • have more weekly quests for bgs; we queued up in singles, as a pve guild, mainly to do our weeklies; with several of us in queue we met abcs, LCs, and others alike and I really enjoyed it; perhaps it’s a good idea if whole guilds queue - who don’t frequently do that - to post something in unofficial discord so others know
  • make existing bgs 3v3 or an optional 3v3, like only start when the queue is not popping after x mins would help perhaps help already a bit; in the long run other, also 1v1 and 2v2 content as Rem mentioned
  • finally give us any idea which color we are in bgs
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Poor UX is probably hurting BG engagement, as well. There should also be a scoreboard accessible from the menu.

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You might want to manage your members then, I remember a statement that LC sometimes had a full group, and a member on the oposit party. So you avoided killing your member and focus on the others “To keep it fun” but maybe I misunderstood?

I have played in pug groups vs full teams a lot of times, it usually plays out like this:

Opponent: full team, full communication, used to pvp, know the map and tactics

Pug group: one afk, or kid, half bad communication with turned of mic or language barriers, people don’t know the map. Tactics is what I shout more or less.

So I can understand that you had more fun. No afk people, lots of easy wins, who! Spawncamp them!

Fact is it would probably be better if you got the beginners under your wing, teach more people to pvp, get more people into the game

Wish you could que as a 5 man group and it auto split you into different teams…

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Oh, and people you once muted in the overworld need to be auto unmuted for the fight. Should probably get a group mic option popup as well to encourage some communication.

I actually would love to see a scoreboard somewhere in the middle of highsteppe just like the dragon races :grimacing:

I’d like to see this as a pop up option. Say, “You have been paired with X, Y, Z. Enable chat?” Y/N

Because there is always the possibility that someone has muted a player for good reason (harassment, e.g.) and it’s not good to auto-unmute at all.

Edit: and usually people will remember those player names.

I dunno man, I pug dungeons and every now and then you get that guy who wants to advertise his own musical taste to the rest of the world. Could happen in BGs too.

some of our members qeue the battlegrounds for fun until a lc members from the other team my guild member was in left party artacking his own team and my team and he made is not fun from cheating and we decided to work together to teach him a lesson to not to bug or cheat the battlegrounds made less enjoyable also i qeue again another lc members did the same thing but in my party both left party attack me and other party members in battlegrounds

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I find the Duo queue to be an excellent resort as of now with the imbalance of the classes and the new boat of new players. This prevents them of going up against a group of 4 experienced people and not having a single chance in the world to have fun due to being spawn camped. They have even chances as that party would be split up and either more newbies or experienced players would join allowing the newbie to not be completely overran. I think the problem is that people just arent winning as much in the battle grounds as they used to because they do not have their designated 4 people. This is why people do not really like the duo queue. But for people who play it for fun and to do the quest are enjoying it because they get an equal chance of winning.

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I like OPs idea about different game modes and how to implement 1v1 and 2v2.

As for the current situation, it seems like it just boils down to the hardcore/elite pvpers not liking that they can’t full team queue, and casuals liking it because it gives them a better shot to win.

I don’t think either side is right or wrong with their feelings on it. I think we’ll have a lot more options once the Quest noobs begin to level up.

Being forced to talk to people seems odd to me.

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